Dear David is based on a Twitter thread (or X as it’s called now) that went viral back in 2017 from cartoonist Adam Ellis, who worked for the popular entertainment news and media site Buzzfeed. At the time Adam detailed what he believed to be a haunting in his apartment by a small boy nicknamed “Dear David.” He would go on to document the haunting with pictures and videos over the course of several months and by June of 2018 it was announced that Buzzfeed was looking to turn it into an actual movie.

I remember hearing about the thread at the time, but didn't actually look much into it, which I suppose is a good thing since I was able to approach this film with low expectations and a fresh mindset. Unfortunately, what might’ve seemed like a good idea at the time simply evolved into nothing more than a cliched tale about a cheesy haunting and sleep paralysis.

To reiterate, the story revolves around cartoonist and social media-obsessed Adam, who’s struggling to find a proper audience with his work in the online news outlet Buzzfeed. It’s not until he starts detailing a haunting in his apartment via Twitter that he begins to get a lot of attention and popularity.

Whether he wants to or not, he must keep his readers happy by delivering regular updates even if it seems to affect his mental health, which has been deteriorating lately because of his lack of sleep thanks to a sudden bout of sleep paralysis, courtesy of “Dear David”.

The movie hits all the regular beats and haunting tropes: starting slow with a chair rocking or a door opening and maybe a pop-up scare or two. This, of course, leads to nobody believing the protagonist, naturally driving them a bit crazy. Eventually they run out of options, so they start doing research into ghosts, etc... You can predict the rest.

The only thing remotely unique about this film is where the story originates from (e.g., Twitter). The rest of the movie is just a dull predictable tale with a bunch of boring and unimaginative scares. However, one positive thing I can say about the movie is that it kept my interest, mainly because I only knew the basics of the original Twitter story, so I was curious how things started and where they were ultimately headed. It turns out nowhere I couldn’t have already guessed.