Imaginary is more than just a new horror film – it’s another franchise-starter attempt by Blumhouse Productions. In that sense, Imaginary delivers some very mixed results: It’s a creepy enough introduction to a new horror icon (Chauncey the Bear, and the demonic entity attached to it), but unfortunately, director Jeff Wadlow can’t manage to bring it all together by the end, leaving just the potential of the concept to carry this series forward.
The story of Imaginary follows a woman named Jessica (DeWanda Wise) who is attempting to settle into the blended family she’s created with her husband Max (Tom Payne) and his daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). After the girls continue being traumatized by their mentally unstable mother (Alix Angelis), Max and Jessica decide a move and fresh start are needed.
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The family returns to Jessica’s childhood home, where Alice discovers a stuffed bear in the basement. Alice soon begins talking to the bear, who she identifies as Chauncey Bear; Jessica and Max think it’s a cute coping mechanism at first, until they notice Alice seemingly speaking in Chauncey’s voice, and doing things for her imaginary friend that no child should be doing. When Jessica tries to get Alice some help, it becomes clear that the darkness is not just Alice’s young mind trying to cope – there’s something evil gripping her – something Jessica begins to recognize as an evil that’s touched her life all along.
Imaginary is a horror film that is more classic scary fairytale than a modern horror movie experience. That stylistic influence is pretty pronounced in the story (written by Wadlow, Greg Erb, and Jason Oremland), with Jessica being a writer and artist of a children’s fairytale series. The supernatural elements of that fairytale are fittingly creepy: the Chauncey Bear toy and the shadowy entity attached to it are used to unsettling effect for most of the run time, with a mixture of demonic and children’s tropes that turns a kid’s imagination into a source of dread. Wadlow directs most of the film with a competent hand, with scenes of genuine creepiness and well-earned jump-scares. Imaginary would have been exponentially better if Wadlow and co. had kept the premise simple in this first installment, confining things to the house; instead, the climax goes for something much more ambitious and quickly unravels as a result.
Without spoilers, Imaginary’s third act pushes the run time (1 hour 44 minutes) too far, while the “reveals” try to establish a much bigger lore for what Chauncey Bear truly is, and where the entity comes from. It turns a haunted house movie into a hokey surrealist nightmare, where the “rules” of the horror fall apart along with the narrative and direction, drowning in a pool of scare sequences that the filmmakers overindulged in, without really questioning if the blown-out finale serves the movie in any way (it does not). It would’ve been far better for Wadlow to keep the backstory and origins of Chauncey mysterious and never fully explained – and instead put more emphasis and focus on resolving the family drama between the characters more efficiently.
To that end, the character drama in Imaginary is just as uneven: DeWanda Wise (Jurassic World Dominion) is tasked to carry a lot of the film and carries it well. There are a lot of layers to Jessica and her backstory, and Wise has to cycle through drama, horror, and many layers of emotional complexity, but is never anything less than compelling to watch. Her two younger co-stars are, well, younger, and have all the performance range of child actors. Taegan Burns (The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers) aptly plays a stereotypically insufferable teenage girl and Pyper Braun does her best as Alice but is arguably leaned on to deliver too much in the way of performance. Other actors like Tom Payne (Prodigal Son), Veronica Falcón (Ozark), and Samuel Salary (Stranger Things) are barely featured and can’t do much to help carry the load.
Imaginary is just a so-so introduction to this horror universe and its monster, leaving a lot of potential on the table for a sequel to better execute on the concept. That said, Chauncey Bear will likely break through as a new horror icon alongside M3GAN, another Blumhouse horror character that is already being viewed for a potential crossover with Chauncey.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Imaginary is now in theaters.
