Danika (2006)

Danika (2006) is a psychological thriller film directed by Ariel Vromen. I’m not a fan of Marisa Tomei, but here she plays really well. I haven’t seen all her films either. That said, this film isn’t extraordinary! Marisa holds her own in this film and gives a good performance in her first role, but unfortunately, everything rests on her. Even if her visions are well realized, there’s not much in the script to take away from this screening with any kind of memory. Or you could say that the script is well put together, but it’s easy to get lost!

It’s up to the viewer to decide whether that’s a good thing or not. Some people have compared this film to Marc Forster‘s Stay, which I think is far superior.

It’s funny to see a young Regina Hall (When The Bough Breaks, Law Abiding Citizen, Girls Trip, Scary Movie 5 ) here. She plays a psychiatrist who is younger than her patient!

In fact, the juggling act between illusion/dream and reality, which is often dealt with in films, can be very enjoyable if it’s properly mastered. Otherwise, as in the case of ‘Danika’, a poor exploitation of this type of subject can be a real headache, making the film as muddled and unreadable as possible. And totally unmemorable! Add to that flat, uninspired direction and you end up with a good, uninteresting, repetitive, and poor turnip.

Danika, a traditional American mother, lives in a middle-class suburb. One morning at the bank where she works, she is the victim of a nightmarish hallucination following a reprimand from her manager. A cycle is set in motion that gradually leads the young woman, who believes her visions to be premonitions, to overprotect her three children. Director Ariel Vromen skillfully blurs the lines, making it difficult to pinpoint Danika’s mental state. Was she traumatized as a child? Is she really psychic? Is she sinking into madness? No clear answer emerges until the very end of the film, when a surprising explanation is offered. I’m not sure it’s entirely plausible!

This ending was essential if the viewer was not to be left with a real sense of unfinished business, although the very convincing performance of Marisa Tomei, who once again carries the film on her shoulders alone, does leave the viewer a little bewildered by the few clues left along the way by the director. The film attempts the difficult gamble of moving forward on an unstable thread that seeks to avoid resorting to the usual codes of series such as ‘Medium’. It may have succeeded, but I still found it very redundant and unsurprising. There’s a side to it where situations are copied and pasted one after the other, without adding anything to a script that fits on a postage stamp. From the very first quarter-hour, the die is cast and the expected ending is yet another disappointment in a poorly constructed film.

There is psychological drama with the air of a thriller in which Craig Bierko, playing the husband, and Kyle Gallner, the eldest of the children, also play their respective characters to perfection. Otherwise, I do think that the director wanted us to understand certain things through the editing, but the problem with the film is that it’s very badly put together, which means that it’s easy to get lost in the story and a certain lack of understanding emerges, leaving me wanting more. Shame!