Summary
- DeWanda Wise shines in Imaginary, but lackluster performances and cheap thrills overwhelm the film overall.
- Exposition-heavy first act may leave you wanting more intensity from the scares and thrills.
- Despite potential for a dark new universe, Imaginary’s unorganized ending may leave audiences wanting more uniqueness.
Looking at the 2024 box office thus far, Focus Features’ recent offering Lisa Frankenstein may have flopped at the box office, but don’t be surprised if it sees a resugence down the line and becomes a sort of cult classic. It was nonstop fun that proved a PG-13 MPAA rating doesn’t mean there won’t be thrills galore. But with a movie like Night Swim, which also hit the masses earlier this year, perhaps an R rating would have helped boost the end result. The same could be said about another Blumhouse horror film that will be released this Friday.
Imaginary features a committed leading turn by the reliably solid DeWanda Wise (Jurassic World Dominion), but it’s not enough to compensate for the other lackluster performances and cheap thrills that ultimately become overwhelming. You can’t help but feel lost along the way, as the third act will hurl nonstop chaos your way, hoping the CGI and seemingly random insertion of monsters will make up for the rather thin storytelling.
Hold Your Stuffy Close — or Don’t!
Imaginary
2.5/5
- Release Date
- March 8, 2024
- Some good scares and thrills
- Great performance from DeWanda Wise
- Heavy on exposition
- Scares are too spread out, could do with more intensity
Some of us still sleep with stuffed animals by our side, even as adults, and many of us had imaginary friends as young children. The creative team behind Imaginary, including director Jeff Ladlow (Truth or Dare) takes these concepts and ignites the idea of, “What if all of this childhood fun just turned dangerous?” There’s an old song that goes, “The hills are alive with the sound of music,” but at a little suburban house where Imaginary takes place, the hallways are instead alive with the sounds of … hostile spirits.
It all starts with a nightmare sequence that startles Jessica (Wise) awake. She’s in bed next to her husband Max (Tom Payne), a touring musician with two daughters from a previous marriage. That means Jessica is the stepmom to two angsty girls — and no, they’re not exactly the most welcome youngsters for Jessica. That includes teenager Taylor (Taegen Burns) and young Alice (Pyper Braun, a star in the making). The name Alice is fitting here, as the “wonderland” type of story that kicks the thrills into high gear. However, the glaring reference also matches the lack of subtlety in other areas of the movie.
Before all that, however, it’s pretty formulaic, dare-we-say forgettable stuff as the exposition is piled on in the first act. After all, the audience has shown up and filled the seats for the popout scares, not for the clichéd family drama. The terrifying moments eventually arrive, but it’s all too few and far between. Fortunately, the film’s heroine is played well by Wise, and is sharply appealing, especially when she is thrust into the supernatural chaos that seems to swallow the rest of the movie whole — to thrilling but also perplexing effect.
One Twist to Rule Them All
There is a lovely little twist about halfway through the film. This may or may not have been the one Cooper Samuelson introduced during pre-production, as Wise hinted at during our recent interview with her. The twist might just be enough to hold your attention until the end, but once the rabbit role is explored to reveal why Alice’s loving teddy bear is mysteriously tasking her with horrific deeds, some cheesy special effects become an overbearing sore spot as the story climaxes.
Leading up to the epic showdown between good and evil, a couple of intriguing supporting players are introduced outside of Jessica’s new family. First up is therapist Dr. Soto, played with a contemplative edge by Veronica Falcón (Ozark). The movie theater’s audience, unfortunately, erupted in laughter at one point, when Soto turned to Jessica and asked, “Has she been practicing ventriloquism?” after sitting down with Alice and learning more about her “imaginary” new pal Chauncey. There are several other moments where you might find yourself bursting out with laughter for the wrong reasons.
Soon after, the timeless Betty Buckley shows up as Jessica’s long-lost neighbor from when Jessica was a little girl. After all, it is Jessica’s childhood home that she has moved back into, alongside her husband and his daughters. Buckley’s mysterious character is a sort of unofficial sequel to her therapist role in M. Night Shyamalam’s Split, which is unfortunately a far superior scary movie. Added to that, actor Samuel Salary (Stranger Things) cooks up a scene-stealing little performance as Jessica’s deranged father who has been reduced to a nursing home as he awaits his slow and painful death.
Even as we learn more about why Jessica’s dad has turned insane, it’s not enough to save this unorganized end result, which seems to throw a lot at the wall just to see what sticks. Sure, Imaginary opens up a dark new universe with franchise potential — if only this first installment was harder-hitting and put a more unique spin on the typical evil-spirit tropes.
From Lionsgate, Imaginary is now playing in theaters.
