This time last year, Blumhouse was on a roll. M3GAN was making a killing at the box office. And the year prior they released the final film of David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy, and the critical and commercial hit, The Black Phone, paving the way for the juggernauts of Insidious: The Red Door and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Unfortunately, following the disappointing Night Swim, the house that Jason Blum built has seen a rough 2024. And sadly the streak continues with the new lackluster film, Imaginary.
Now I’ll say right out, I’ve seen much worse movies than Imaginary. I really disliked The Exorcist: Believer and The Boogeyman from last year. Those are just irredeemable pieces of garbage. For what it’s worth Imaginary at least lives up to its title, giving us aspects within the movie (particularly the latter half) that live up to its title. The unfortunate thing is we have to slog through the rest of the unscary, cliché-ridden bore to get to that.
At its core, Imaginary is about a stepmother trying to get the approval of her stepdaughters. Jessica (DeWanda Wise), her husband Max (Tom Payne), and Max’s two kids move into her old childhood home, where something happened to her when she was a kid; she disappeared for several days. When her youngest stepdaughter, Alice (Pyper Braun) begins playing with and talking to a stuffed bear she found in the basement, named Chauncey, crazy things begin happening.
That’s essentially the premise of Imaginary. It rarely ever gets more complicated than that. And there’s a couple of twists in the movie that are just really silly. But naturally the regular tropes are all there: the rebellious teenager, children speaking in different voices, and a convenient old kook who everyone thinks is nuts that shows up at the right time to deliver exposition.
But the biggest issue with Imaginary isn’t how derivative it is. It’s simply that it’s absolutely not scary. While some may say Chucky from Child’s Play isn’t scary, or M3GAN, Chauncey the bear legitimately makes both of those characters look like the source of all nightmares. The bear is just, for lack of a better description, too cute to be menacing. Nothing about him or the predictable scares surrounding him makes this movie scary. The most unsettling thing about it might just be the imagery you witness in the background of a scene — namely figures that appear and disappear. But beyond that, it’s hard to feel the terrifying stakes of a situation when the antagonist is legitimately a cuddly little teddy bear. At this rate, if I wanted to see a morally dubious teddy bear running around, I may as well watch Ted and Ted 2. And note: the bear doesn’t really walk around, so much as occasionally move its head slightly here and there.
That’s the issue with two-thirds of this movie. You’re not scared. Or interested. You don’t really care about the characters enough to care about what’s going on in the movie. Yeah, you sort of wish DeWanda Wise works things out with her daughters. But overall they drag out the mystery about what happened to Jessica way too long, despite how simplistic and obvious it is. We can piece together what happened to her based on essentially everything that’s set up in the film’s opening sequence. But they continue to pretend the audience is stupid and drag out the mystery, only to force in the aforementioned exposition kook to explain to us something we already figured out. When the movie remembers it’s a “horror” movie and attempts to throw in superfluous jump scares, they all fall flat. Such as an overdrawn sequence involving Matthew Sato’s Liam, the wanna be druggie boyfriend of Jessica’s eldest daughter.
From a performance standpoint, Wise is trying everything she can to salvage the film. Makes sense given she’s an executive producer for this. She, alongside co-stars Braun and Taegen Burns give the movie a bit more emotion than one would expect. It’s not exactly profound. But I’ll give them some points for trying to inject a little bit of heart into the story, to make it about something human.
Among other things I’ll have to give the movie credit for will be that the final act of the movie does end up at least living up to its title, and gets pretty imaginative. As Jessica goes after Alice when she’s taken into the “imaginary world” of the “Never Ever,” the movie starts to feel a bit like Labyrinth. Giant practical monster suits, and crazy MC Escher stairs, along with neon-lit voids with clouds surrounding it. Admittedly, I found it to be reasonably entertaining seeing the fun and crazy circumstances play out in the “Never Ever.” Again, it’s not scary. But it’s visually interesting and a bit more fun. I just wish it didn’t take that long for the movie to get to it, because it’s what sets the movie apart from, say, the last Blumhouse movie to come out, which was about evil pool water.
There’s honestly not much else I can give the movie credit for. It’s mostly just dull and incredibly silly. I suppose Betty Buckley deserves some credit for delivering an over-the-top ridiculous campy performance. But other than that, the score is unmemorable. The visuals and production design bland until the final act. And the premise is just downright silly, as are the twists. Again, I just can’t compel myself to quiver in fear at the sight of an inanimate, cute little teddy bear.
Sadly, it’s just not a great start to the year for Blumhouse. But I remain optimistic for the horror genre for the rest of 2024. There’s a new Quiet Place movie, a new Alien movie, a new Omen movie in a month, and Ti West’s MaXXXine. And as far as original horror goes, Radio Silence has Abigail coming out next month too! So lots to look forward to. Therefore we must not let the trashy movies about evil pool water and cute teddy bears define the remainder of this year in horror. In fact I promise you, by the end of the year, I guarantee you’ll have forgotten these movies ever existed. I know as soon as I got out of Imaginary, I definitely did.
Overall Score: C-
Imaginary is now playing in theaters.