Danika

Plot synopsis:
Danika Merrick (Marisa Tomei) suffers from increasingly disturbing, paranoid hallucinations. Most of her hallucinations involve threats to her family and media-fuelled fears such as child kidnappings, car accidents, her children lying and terrorism. Danika confides to her husband, Randy (Craig Bierko), and Evelyn (Regina Hall), her psychiatrist.
The movie begins with Danika apologizing for being late, being scolded by her bank manager about incorrect calculations. Her manager leaves the office instructing Danika to remain there until errors are corrected. Danika then witnesses a bank robbery in progress with two trigger-happy robbers shooting anyone that moves. The alarm activates, and the robbers force Danika's boss to tell them where the security monitors are located. The manager points to her office where a shivering Danika seeks shelter in a corner. As the door opens, she expects to come face to face with a gun-toting bank robber, but is confronted by her manager who wonders what is wrong with her.
The movie continues with increasingly paranoid hallucinations, due to schizophrenia, including seeing a little girl in front of her daughter's school being pulled away by a suspicious-looking man as she asks Danika to help her; Danika does nothing only to watch in horror as the same little girl's mother appears on the news begging for her child's safe return. Danika also finds a human head in a grocery bag as she's putting the groceries in the fridge. She's oblivious as, standing in front of the school looking for her daughter who ran off, her daughter's teacher is killed by falling glass, (it turns out it's the same person's head she found in the grocery bag a day before). She also believes her son's partner for a school assignment is trying to give him AIDS, after she imagines the girl crawling into her bed and confessing she is dying from AIDS and is going to give it to Danika's son.
Near the end of the film, the audience learns that Danika was in a car accident years earlier while driving her young children home and she makes a side visit to see Randy. The accident occurred immediately after Danika found out he was having an extramarital affair with the children's nanny in a motel shower. Did her husband's extramarital affair cause Danika to crash? Or had she had a psychological break before learning of her husband's tryst? Danika's vision of the nanny is that of her psychiatrist who's been treating her. The nanny reveals that both she and Randy thinks that Danika needs serious psychiatric help because her behavior is dangerous to her children. Danika slaps both Randy and the nanny and drives away with the children in tow. In the car accident, all of Danika's children die, leaving Danika, (and, of course, Randy who was back at the motel), as the sole survivors. It can be assumed she never saw Randy again and which he probably blames the tragic death of their children on Danika and her "visions."
As the film ends, a homeless Danika sits on a bench at the scene where the accident occurred, basically reliving the events of that day, presumably every day. She slowly walks away pushing a shopping cart filled with her children's belongings. All the events after the accident—reuniting with her husband and raising her children to adulthood, are hallucinations Danika experiences, caused by the tremendous guilt she feels for running the red light that led to her children's deaths.

Tags: suspenseful, murder, violence, flashback

Review:
Relatively new cinematic team of director Ariel Vromen and writer Joshua Leibner pounce onto the scene with a surprisingly fine little film that has basically gone unnoticed.
This is a tough movie to review: almost anything that is said about it diminishes the impact of a fresh look.Danika (the superb and grossly underused actress Marisa Tomei) is a beautiful, well-dressed successful professional woman, loved by her husband Randy (Craig Bierko) and her children Kurt (Kyle Gallner), Lauren (Nicki Prian) and Brian (Ridge Canipe).
Yet even from the opening scenes we can tell something is amiss: Danika 'sees' disturbing things, terrifying events and people that alter her attention to her job and her family.
Danika overcompensates for her fears by being an overprotective mother, an unfortunate trait that begins to fracture her family.The pace of the film changes to rapid fire events as the reasons for Danika's visions become clear: we finally see just what made this brilliant and strong woman the victim of a terrified and disturbed psyche and the manner in which each of the characters in the story impacts this discovery is well-illuminated.
The surprise ending scene is a stunner and one that will haunt the viewer.Marisa Tomei makes this very difficult, well-written role completely believable.
Regina Hall is especially impressive as Danika's psychologist.I would highly recommend seeking this movie out if it comes to a festival or theater near you!.
Let's see: I had great expectations towards this film, since Danika pretty much has the potential to be a fairly enjoyable thriller, but to my disappointment, it turned out to be one of those films that deliberately try to be confusing just for kicks.
You know, the typical soft-horror/thriller/drama flick in which the main character keeps having hallucinations and visions about horrible things happening around her and the rest of the characters are dead worried but they still don't do anything to help her out.
This film pretty much offers a nice variety of pointless hallucination sequences in which Marisa Tomei, giving a flawless performance, always repeats the same situations but in different scenarios.
During the course of the film, the mentally unstable woman, appears basically smothering her children and over-worrying about every little thing, making the rest of her family lose their patience.
However, it is clear to Danika that something is definitely not okay with her, as she realizes that she's experiencing weird hallucinations that turn her life into hell on earth.This film offers a few sequences that promise some sort of explanation whatsoever or at least a tiny little connection to the end.
Nevertheless, just like many other recent flicks out there with a twist in the end, 'Danika' turned out to be ambiguous for no reason and it tries to deceive the audience and doubt about their own intelligence.
I wouldn't label it as 'unwatchable', because that would be unfair, considering that there are a few good things that deserve to be appreciated, but it's mostly Marisa Tomei's performance actually.
'Danika' is not terribly bad, but frankly, I was utterly disappointed when the good atmosphere and the few achievements were suddenly overshadowed by the silly ending.
It's hard to comment on it without giving away details and spoilers, so let me just say, this movie takes your full attention (don't cook dinner and try to keep up!) Tomei is NEVER a disappointment.
I admit, there will be boo-hooers who dislike it because they haven't the patience or the depth to grasp the true meaning behind this film, but this is why Danika is a work of art and it's star a true artist.
Well, after 30 minutes of that, it becomes pretty annoying and tedious.At first I thought the movie was setup to make it hard to follow what was happening.
Non of the plot-points that were introduced during the repetitive scenes had any relevance to the eventual end of the movie.
I work at Blockbuster so I was telling everybody about this great movie coming out on Tuesday saying, "I'm only 45 minutes in but so far, it's really great!" Well, I finished it just now and I have to say, the ending wasn't all that great.
Don't get me wrong, it's a "think about it after the movie is over" ending and I did but I really wish they would have ended it a bit better.Great Story - Great Beginning - Great Middle - Okay End. Audiovisual hemorrhoids.
Marisa and Regina turn is great performances and the the writing itself makes this movie a winner.
This movie is more of a Psycho thriller then a Hooror movie and I cant wait to see what Blue Omega has lined up in the future.I would recommend this movie to anyone You will not be disappointed as it is a very good production and overall I give this Movie a 10 considering the budget was not that much and to pull off a masterpiece like this show you what good writing and directing can do for a film like this.I cant say enough about how wild and mind teasing it truly is.
For this movie it is very important that you watch it closely otherwise you will miss important clues for understanding the ending!
I saw trailer for this movie and looked really great.The plot: When devoted wife and mother, Danika Merrick, begins experiencing a series of terrifying delusions, she wonders whether she is actually having visions of future events or she is slowly slipping into.
It started of really well as the movie went, all things she knew was going to happen and she dose nothing to stop and this movie also some of kinda of twist,which I do not understand but I didn't really care if I understood or not, as was really disappointing in this movieI going to give this movie 4 out of 10 worth watching a least once.
It looks like someone had an interesting idea for the ending of "a movie" and then fit a long, boring and confusing film into it.
Everything about the movie, including Tomei's performance (who I generally like as an actress), was just bland.
I loved the different illusions of this movie and I began to understand it and like the it; I noticed she sees things from the past and it got me a bit confused.I really don't know if I like this movie ha-ha because honestly, I don't understand the ending one bit.
I feel like it's a really good movie and the thrill really gets to you but I just don't understand what happens in the end.This stupid thing requires me to have 10 lines and i really don't know what else to say besides that I just want clarification on the ending.
I just want to know what is the meaning then I will watch the movie all over again with a better understanding :).
For those who think its only people involved in the production making good reviews, I feel sorry that you couldn't grasp this film.
I have absolutely nothing to do with this film and I give it 8 stars.Marissa Tomei is still very Hot and a great actress who gave a stellar performance.
An all around great film, good acting, cast, plot, etc for those who don't like spoon fed plots..
The only good things about this movie are Marisa Tomei and Kyle..
It simply goes to great lengths to let you know something is wrong with her head.Apparently the filmmakers felt this gave them license to produce scene after scene of random, unrelated material with twisting camera angles and the characters moving from a somewhat solid, real atmosphere to a whirling dream world where everything spells disaster.This happens for an hour and thirty-five minutes, roughly.I would say it all culminates in a lackluster ending, but "culminate" is too strong a word.
What I do mind is a film that ends up being more like a Rorschach test than any kind of intelligent, coherent item of media.
Like I said, things are chopped, Marisa Tomei's acting chops are not part of this "film", if we can call it that.
I think a lot of people will hate this movie, because there is no a boy-loves-girl-marry-have children-happy ending story...
When I saw this movie, I thought it was an European movie, I couldn't believe it's an American one...I remembered "American Psycho".I think there's no "easy" movie to watch...I was horrified because the violence is very real, I live in a country with a lot of drug problems, with about 16 dead people every day (men and women and children), so everything is possible...
a psycho-thriller...In 50 or 60 years, when many of us were dead, someone will watch this movie and he will say: "IT'S WONDERFUL...
The short version for those who haven't seen the movie is there is no 'twist' in the now common cinematic style there is only the version inside Danika's head and the revelation of the reality.For the hard of understanding I'll break this down into simple terms.
DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T YET SEEN THE MOVIE.There are basically only 3 scenes in this movie.1) Danika's fantasy life where she rejects the terrible thing that happened to her and tries to substitute her own reality.
It is as though she is remembering the truth sitting on that bench but it is too painful for her and she quickly retreats back to the fantasy (her kids come back to life and join her and her husband) 3) The real world present day where she is down and out listening to parts of scene one and scene two replay in her head constantly courtesy of her Schizophrenia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia)The whole film up into the last scene is there to give you an impression of what being her and being schizophrenic is.
Yes Danika's over protective soccer mom persona is fundamentally unlikable but that person never existed, she is a reflection of her very real guilt over causing the death of her children.The hallucinations within the scene one fantasy are perhaps the weakest part of the film, they are used as tool to keep a viewer interested long enough to see the film through and while the provide clues that nothing else that is happening is real or at least that there is some level of menatl issue.
They are however representative of the way a schizophrenic's beliefs may vary and may represent her additional fears and paranoia.In short you are not ever likely to see a film that will give a better impression of what its like to be insane in this fashion (i.e. believing scene 1 is some kind of reality) but if you can't handle a film that does not have a completely sequential plot, or a writer changing the 'rules' of a film to make a point this will be wasted on you..
There are still lots of loose endings and unresolved questions, but maybe this movie was just too "psychologically thrilling" for us to understand!
Danika had the potential to be a great movie but it ultimately went no where.
There was massive build up and it seemed like there would be a big pay off but then the ending ruined the entire movie.If you ignore the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, the acting was great, the characters had enough depth to draw you in and you will really want to see how it all plays out.
The kids died long before they got to that age and it was ALL a hallucination of a crazy bag lady.I was really excited to see this film but it stumbled and fell at the very end.
With that MENTAL CONDITION we get to see her view of what could have been if she had forgiven her husband and went to work that crucial day instead of the motel.Good twist, but far too many psychotic sequences leading to a bizarre feeling of what the heck this movie is about.
I kept watching it to try to figure out just what was going on, and was so disappointed and confused when they revealed the ending.
If you're not watching it (or rewatching it) carefully, most likely you will miss out on important clues and end up disliking the movie.
but I would recommend it to anyone who likes to be surprised.One bit of advice for those people reading this review after watching the movie and not understanding it: go back and look >closely<, this time, to the items in the shopping cart at the end.
This film is good but I guessed the kids where dead pretty early on in this very short movie.
Danika (Marisa Tomei) is a thirty-five years old overprotective mother with a beautiful family composed by her successful husband Randy (Craig Bierko), two sons - the teenager Kurt (Kyle Gallner) and the little Brian (Ridge Canipe), and one teenager daughter - Lauren (Nicki Prian).
The lack of attention caused by her disturbed mind leads her family to a tragedy."Danika" is an impressive and challenging American dark movie showing the complexity of the human mind.
My interpretation of the story is very simple: after finding her beloved husband cheating her with the nanny of their children, Danika becomes an insecure, stressed and overprotective mother, affecting her professional life.
Were it not for the fact that Marisa Tomei is one of most undervalued talents in modern film entertainment, and someone who has consistently delivered heartfelt characterizations in the past, I would have skipped "Danika" entirely.
The teaser or blurb on the DVD made it out to seem like there was some kind of a psychic element in the plot, and given that "Medium" on NBC has been such a success, I thought that perhaps this film would be a surprise.What was surprising was precisely how bad this movie really is.Frankly, Marisa Tomei is now and has been for a long time, one of the truly luminous beauties in modern films.
There were plenty of "psychic" elements tossed into a mixer and poured out as a script, but that script started SOMEWHERE interesting and ended up going NOWHERE at a glacial pace.There are three people to blame for this cinematic disaster: the screenwriter who got the credit for this garbled mess of a movie, the director, who was apparently powerless to get script changes, or so totally clueless that he could not see the powerful beginning of a precognition-based plot simply disappearing halfway through it all, and me for wasting my money on this DVD rental.Additionally, the various and sundry persons who got "credits" for being this film's "producers," should be ashamed of wasting however much money this effort cost.
Seldom in the history of modern film production have so many good and talented actors and actresses been paid to do a movie that turned out so very badly.Regina Hall was good and the film earned a 2 because of that, and because Marisa Tomei made an obvious effort to interact with Hall in several critical scenes, keeping her 'angst' low-key while Hall's character got a chance to shine.If a meteorite or a comet comes by and burns every copy of "Danika" known, into dust, including the master and the daily rushes ...
Yes, obviously the entire movie is a fantasy in Danika's mind.
At first I was a bit confused as to whether she gets in the crash while her children are younger or older, like in the present, I thought maybe that was another twist they wanted to throw at you.
You really feel for her when you see Danika in the last scene sitting on the bench watching the world go by and all the while playing this drama in her head.
I couldn't move from the DVD the entire movie, i was so sucked into the story and wanted to get it but i realize now that i didn't so now there is a hundred thoughts in my head.
I really liked the movie, it was made good but i hope someone can explain it to me more so i can really get it in my head!
There is a revealing moment in "Danika" where the protagonist is sitting in a psychiatrist's office, and the first point she makes to the doctor is that "I'm going crazy." This film is successful in revealing the darkest caverns of the human mind in the character of Danika.Stylistically, the film was jumpy and made use of far too many confusing scenes wherein it was difficult to understand if the action was "real" or if it was one of Danika's hallucinations.
The same realization should have come to Randy that his wife needed to be institutionalized, if only for the sake of the children.While "Danika" was overly manipulative in its film technique, it is nonetheless worth seeing for the multi-dimensional performance of Marisa Tomei.
In a previous review of Ariel Vromen's debut, Rx, I suggested, without having seen Danika, that Rx, with a little adjustment could have been a better class of Lifetime movie.
She was trying to cope with the loss and pain, so she created an alternate reality in her mind.At the end of the movie, you get the real story.TBH, I enjoyed it at first, but at the end, I felt like I had just wasted that time.
I really WANTED this movie to be good, but the the whole point didn't seem very original to me, and I feel like I've seen twists like this done a lot better.There just weren't any redeeming qualities about this film.
DO NOT READ this comment IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE MOVIE>>>>>IT will spoil it for youThis Movie was very good for about the first hour and then the end was like OMG!
The acting was good, the plot seemed interesting, the directing and scenes were good, and the movie keeps your attention well.
In the end, you simply learn that basically the whole movie was a hallucination.