At first glance, it would seem as if Blumhouse’s new horror movie Imaginary is just another killer doll movie along the lines of Child’s Play or Annabelle. And after a watch, that’s pretty much what it is. But with a few twists.
Imaginary is about a children’s book author/illustrator named Jessica (DeWanda Wise from Jurassic World Dominion) who moves into her childhood home with her husband, Max (The Walking Dead’s Tom Payne), and his two girls, the teenaged Taylor (Monarch’s Taegen Burns) and the younger Alice (Desperation Road’s Pyper Braun). Lonely in her new place, Alice immediately makes an imaginary friend named Chauncey who takes the form of a cute little teddy bear. But there’s more to Chauncey than meets the eye – and he has history with Jessica.
Directed by Jeff Wadlow (Fantasy Island, Truth or Dare) from a screenplay he wrote with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland (the pair who wrote Playmobil: The Movie and Monster High: The Movie), Imaginary evokes both the wonder of childhood naïveté and the horrors that can come from it. It leans heavily on a lot of the same age-old horror tropes as every other Blumhouse movie, but it also brings some freshness to the game. The uncertainty as to whether or not Chauncey is, in fact, real or whether he is just a figment of Alice’s (and, by extension, Jessica’s) imagination is a key component of the story. The plot is full of surprises, and they keep coming even after the audience thinks that they’ve got it all figured out.
It’s no wonder that Imaginary is being billed as “from the producers of Five Nights at Freddy’s and M3GAN.” It deals with much of the same subject matter. Not only does Imaginary feature the coming alive of a kid’s toy, but it also confronts dealing with grief and childhood trauma on both the child and adult side. Everyone in the movie seems to be damaged, and that’s what makes them vulnerable to Chauncey and his deviousness. Some of this damage is left unexplored, which leads to the characters feeling a bit hollow, but that’s nothing new with horror movies.
Imaginary is an engaging and compelling little movie. At least, it is until the third act. The surprises do keep coming in the later stages of the film, but they’re brought about by heavy-handed exposition delivered by the stereotypical nosey neighbor (played by Betty Buckley from the original Carrie). When the twists are provided by verbal narration instead of visual imagery, they lose most of their punch. They’re still surprising, but there’s not as much impact.
That’s not the only problem with the movie’s climax. Like many horror movies, Imaginary takes a great premise and doesn’t quite stick the landing with it. It goes from a tense exercise in childhood paranoia (“is this bear really doing all of these things?”) to a full-blown alternate universe exploration movie (borderline Insidious territory). The movie’s plot gets too big for its own good, and Waddle and company have trouble reeling it back in.
For his part, Chauncey is a fun horror movie villain. Without spoiling anything, he’s a shape-shifter – he doesn’t just stay a cute little teddy bear for the whole movie. The way that Waddle presents him is very creepy, seemingly altering the bear’s facial expressions just enough to make the viewer wonder if the cute face is changing or if it’s all “imaginary.” There’s a subtlety to Chauncey that has the potential to make children afraid of teddy bears in the same way that Poltergeist made them afraid of clown dolls.
For what it’s worth, Blumhouse will keep on pumping out horror movies regardless of any and all misfires that they have. And Imaginary isn’t quite a misfire, but it’s not a direct hit, either. In the grand scheme of things, it will be remembered at best as a blip on Blumhouse’s radar, just another title on the resume in their quest for fright-flick domination.
GRADE: C+
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some violent content, language, and drug material
Release Date: March 8, 2024
Running Time: 1 hour 44 minutes
