IMAGINARY - Mark Reviews Movies

Imaginary, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 8, 2024

Imaginary revolves around such a silly idea that one would think co-writer/director Jeff Wadlow might try to have some fun with it. Instead, this horror story about a child's imaginary friend playing some demented games with the kid is a self-serious bore, latching on to formula and only somewhat enjoyable for a few unintentional laughs.

The first thing of note, perhaps, is that here is yet another generic horror movie that takes a metaphor about trauma and simply makes it part of the story. There's Jessica (DeWanda Wise), for example, whose mother died of cancer, whose father lost his mind shortly after, and who now has a recurring nightmare about being chased by a spider-like creature through an otherworldly hallway.

In case we don't catch that central theme from all of this, Jessica is also a children's book writer, whose main character is a millipede being chased by a spider. The screenplay, written by the director along with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, wears the wearing of the thematic intentions on its sleeve on its sleeve.

There's also Jessica's new family by way of her marriage to Max (Tom Payne). He has two daughters, the younger Alice (Pyper Braun) and the teenaged Taylor (Taegen Burns), and they're all dealing with the fallout of Max's ex-wife and the girls' mother suffering some mental breakdown. Alice has a severe burn scar on her forearm, and Jessica has her own scars in the same place. At this point, it should come as no surprise that the movie's idea of subtlety is only pointing out this connection maybe three times over the course of the story.

The plot proper starts when the family moves into Jessica's childhood home, after her father (played by Samuel Salary) has been sent to an assisted care facility. The gimmick is that Alice, left alone by Jessica to take a work call, hears a voice, follows it into the basement, finds a hidden door down there, and discovers a teddy bear. In her head, the bear calls itself Chauncey, but obviously, the bear is a lot more—and a lot less, apparently, after a twist that's fairly inconsequential, although the way Wadlow bludgeons us with the revelation with a lengthy montage certainly shows how clever and important he thinks it is.

The teddy bear wants to play with the girl—innocently at first, with games of hide-and-seek and tea parties and a scavenger hunt, but much less so when Jessica realizes there's more to Chauncey's list of things to collect on the back. The bear has promised to take Alice to a secret place if she does everything on the list, including hurting herself. There's a cheapness to the child-in-peril element here—as Alice perceives a rusty nail as a flower, for example—that doesn't make it feel exploitative but certainly doesn't make it suspenseful, either.

As for the rest of the plot, it should be pretty apparent. Chauncey starts asking more and more dangerous things of Alice. Jessica realizes that the bear might have a connection to her own childhood. The teen stepdaughter has a guy over who gets a couple blatant jump-scares thrown his way (One of the funniest moments is imagining the stuffed bear quickly folding up a towel to cover its tracks), and the father proves himself a completely useless character by going away on a music gig just before the third-act shenanigans.

If there's any confusion, worry not, because we have Gloria (Betty Buckley), a walking, talking, and suddenly-and-conveniently-appearing provider of more exposition and explanation than this material demands. Seriously, this woman comes out of nowhere for her two big scenes and just starts laying it on thick with the back story and the supernatural hokum. Buckley's performance might be the one overtly self-aware element of the movie, because the actor really does come across as someone whose only purpose in life is to tell people everything they could want to know and more about secret pasts, the long and culturally diverse history of imaginary friends, and some otherworldly realm.

It's all so predictable, repetitive, and, well, unimaginative. That's particularly true of the extended climax of Imaginary, which has a group of characters travel to that other world, where anything is supposedly possible by way of the power of imagination. The best the filmmakers here can come up with, though, is a set that looks like an abandoned funhouse, a dog, a bear monster, and an attempt to pull off, not one, but two fake-out endings. If a horror movie like this can't think smarter, it could at least have the good sense to dream even a bit bigger.

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