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Imaginary<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 104 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (some violent content, drug material, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jeff Wadlow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb and Jason Oremland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Sparks & Shadows\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James McMillan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 8, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: DeWanda Wise, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun, Tom Payne, Betty Buckley, Veronica Falcon, Samuel Salary, Matthew Sato, Alix Angelis, Wanetah Walmsley, Rhythm Hurd.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0While we were waiting for Imaginary<\/strong> to begin, my friend commented that he hoped it would be better than Night Swim. I replied that a blank screen would be an improvement over that wash-out of a horror film. His concerns are valid though. The last few titles from Blumhouse- The Exorcist: Believer, Five Nights at Freddy\u2019s, Insidious: The Red Door and the aforementioned Night Swim- haven\u2019t exactly been stellar. I\u2019m sorry to say Imaginary<\/strong> continues this trend.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The trailer would have you believe Imaginary<\/strong> is about a killer teddy bear. It\u2019s a little more complicated than that. More than just a routine Child\u2019s Play knock-off, it weaves psychological drama into an already convoluted fabric. The plot centers on Jessica (Wise, Jurassic World Dominion), a children\u2019s book author\/illustrator who moves back into her childhood home with her new family, musician husband Max (Payne, The Walking Dead) and two daughters, moody teen Taylor (Burns, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers) and cute-as-a-button moppet Alice (Braun, Erin & Aaron). Things are already tense with Taylor giving her new mom a hard time and Jessica dealing with nightmares she doesn\u2019t quite understand. She was hoping a change of scenery would make things better. No surprise, it made them worse.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0While exploring her new digs, Alice finds an old teddy bear in the basement. She immediately bonds with her new friend, calling it Chauncey and carrying on conversations with it. Her parents couldn\u2019t be happier; the kid is finally starting to come out of her shell. Yeah, the kid\u2019s had it rough what with the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mentally ill bio-mom. It left scars, both physical and psychological. Maybe this new imaginary friend will help the healing process along. It couldn\u2019t hurt. Wait a minute! Oh, yes it can!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0It seems like a harmless game at first. Alice is conducting a scavenger hunt, collecting items on a list dictated to her by Chauncey. It soon becomes cause for concern when the kid tries to impale her hand on a rusty nail. She says it\u2019s on the list to do something that hurts. If she gets everything she\u2019s supposed to, her friend will take her on a \u201ctrip\u201d. To where? I\u2019ll get back to that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Directed by Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare), Imaginary<\/strong> could have been something. It has an interesting premise and the story doesn\u2019t go where you think it will. The problem lies in the execution. Simply put, it\u2019s not scary. There\u2019s little in the way of suspense and a disappointing lack of effective \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes. It\u2019s like Wadlow went on his own scavenger hunt, collecting the usual horror tropes (e.g. fractured family unit, repressed childhood memories, weird elderly neighbor, possessed toy, etc.) and throwing them into the narrative in no particular order. To his credit, he does go somewhere with it all. It\u2019s someplace we\u2019ve been before…. sort of.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0That brings us back to the \u201ctrip\u201d. What\u2019s the destination? It\u2019s like this. At some point, Alice goes missing and the family- just Jessica and Taylor by this point, the dad is on tour with his band- goes crazy searching for her. It turns out they don\u2019t have to go very far to find her. She never left the house, not exactly. If you\u2019ve seen Poltergeist, then you know what I\u2019m getting at. The only thing missing from this scenario is a miniscule medium beckoning the child into the light. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0By no stretch of the imagination is Imaginary<\/strong> a good horror movie. It\u2019s too tame. Due to the constraints put on it by its kid-friendly PG-13 rating, it can\u2019t traumatize audiences too deeply (if at all) nor can it pile on the gore thus defeating the purpose of the genre. That\u2019s not to say it isn\u2019t interesting. It kind of is, sort of. The messy but predictable storyline held my attention throughout. And it is a mess, a confused one. The writers struggle to tell a coherent story ultimately dealing with the damage caused by trauma if left untreated. Jessica buried hers deep down and now it\u2019s manifesting itself in a way that endangers her also traumatized stepdaughter. Wadlow takes his time getting to this point, choosing instead to dangle several plot threads before viewers for a while before tying them together rather loosely.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0There are plot holes aplenty in Imaginary<\/strong>. The one that stands out most prominently involves Max who doesn\u2019t play a big role in the events to come. He leaves to go on tour about midway through (if that) and is never heard from or heard of again. You\u2019d think somebody would call him to tell him his kid is missing which would make him come rushing home from wherever he is. NOPE! What\u2019s up with that?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The acting, like the direction, is rather flat. The liveliest performance comes from Betty Buckley (Split) as the aforementioned neighbor. She used to babysit Jessica when she was little. Jessica doesn\u2019t remember her. She also doesn\u2019t remember the bad thing that happened in the house, the reason she went to live with her grandmother, the thing that rendered her widowed father unable to care for her. In any event, it\u2019s clear from the start this neighbor knows what happened and is waiting for the right time to bring it up. It\u2019s also clear she\u2019s a little off and will become completely unhinged by the time the climax rolls around. Braun and Burns are okay in their roles as stock characters. Wise doesn\u2019t make much of an impression in the lead. She\u2019s as forgettable as the rest of Imaginary<\/strong>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0In fairness, Imaginary<\/strong> isn\u2019t a bad movie. It\u2019s just an unremarkable, unmemorable one. It\u2019s watchable though. It\u2019s definitely better than Night Swim, but that\u2019s not too high a bar to set now, is it?<\/p>\r\n Imaginary (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 104 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (some violent content, drug material, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jeff Wadlow\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb and Jason Oremland\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Sparks & Shadows\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James McMillan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 8, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: DeWanda Wise, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun, Tom Payne, Betty Buckley, Veronica Falcon, Samuel Salary, Matthew Sato, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Imaginary-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1059,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/1059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Imaginary-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C951&ssl=1\")
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