Did you ever have an imaginary friend? Director Jeff Wadlow showcases this question in Imaginary, a new Blumhouse horror movie about a woman named Jessica (DeWanda Wise), whose stepdaughter, Alice (Pyper Braun), discovers a teddy bear named Chauncey. Alice is happy to have an imaginary friend, but Chauncey begins to ask strange things from her in this classic horror movie premise. This film feels familiar for a few reasons while featuring a few strong ideas. Although it’s an ambitious movie with some strong aspects throughout, it can also feel generic and derivate overall.
Wadlow has had a long history directing horror films for Blumhouse. He previously helmed films like Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island, both panned by critics. With Imaginary, there is a sure improvement. From the opening scene, there are a few moments where Wadlow gets creative with moving his camera. However, he can’t refrain from the occasional ineffective jump scare, where a character will show up, accompanied by a jolt of music. He makes the wise choice not to make the noise insufferably loud, but it still feels like it doesn’t fully work.
The movie also attempts to establish a few ideas surrounding the characters. Jessica has married a musician named Max (Tom Payne) and is still warming up to his kids from his previous marriage. Their relationship and chemistry are quite average, but the strongest emotional core surrounds Jessica’s relationship with her father, who is in a mental hospital. They have a complex relationship that started in her childhood. There are a few necessary moments that could have made it stronger, but it’s a worthy attempt.
One of the weaker elements is the relationship between Jessica and Taylor (Taegen Burns), the bratty teenage daughter. There isn’t a lot to latch onto because Taylor is not a particularly likable character. There is another attempt to show the sadness of this family with a storyline surrounding their birth mother. However, much like many of the ideas in this movie, it also feels undercooked. This screenplay has a lot of elements that could have been very strong, but instead, they are simply a bunch of mediocre threads that don’t create something too worthwhile by the end of it.
But when it comes to horror, there are a few scenes that work pretty well. Imaginary works the least when Wadlow goes for jump scares, but it works the best when he plays with darkness. There are a few scenes where Wadlow has something creepy lurking right around the corner, or deep into the background. When he does this, the film works wonderfully. You can see Wadlow putting in effort to make something that could be unsettling, especially during a few moments where he plays around with the background of a scene. This movie has no shortage of good ideas, but the movie can ultimately play a bit sillier than intended.
Another fascinating concept is the fact that many creepy doll movies like Annabelle and Child’s Play make the doll look scary right from the get-go. Chauncey does not look very intimidating. He looks a lot like a normal teddy bear that any child could have. And this is a strong idea. Horror films work well whenever they take something mundane and harmless and force you to look at them in a new light. However, once Chauncey’s “true form” gets revealed in the movie, a lot of that impact gets lost, and it becomes ridiculous.
It definitely goes for it, especially during the final 45 minutes. However, this is where the movie seems to borrow a few ideas from James Wan’s Insidious. There are a lot of similarities in how Imaginary and Insidious handle their ideas, particularly the idea of entering another dimension, but when you have a film like Insidious that already did the concept in a much scarier way, it does not benefit this film. Furthermore, by the end of it, Imaginary feels as if it overstays its welcome, spending far too much time tooling with its viewer and getting wrapped up in a very ludicrous series of events. One character has a deranged monologue that really takes you off guard.
By the time the credits roll on Imaginary, you will have mixed feelings. There are a few good ideas here and there, but the characterization needed a bit more work, and the scares needed to be polished a tad more. It’s a film where the script could have used another draft or two to really land its ideas. However, Wise and Braun give excellent performances. They are very convincing, and they commit to these ideas quite well. Ultimately, this is far from Wadllw’s worst work as a director, and even though he’s not quite there yet, this is a step in the right direction for him.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
