“Imaginary” is a Waste of a Great Premise

“Imaginary” is another lackluster waste of a great idea from Blumhouse Productions. It holds so much promise, yet it is never able to reach the full potential of the idea that it brings to the table.

The movie follows Jessica (DeWanda Wise) who moves back into her childhood home with her husband (Tom Payne) and her two step-daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). After Alice finds a stuffed bear named Chauncey and begins to talk to it as if it were a real person, a dangerous and malicious imaginary “friend” terrorizes the family.

There can be plenty to like about this movie, but it’s really just the typical Blumhouse fare with a slow plot, mediocre acting, and wasted potential. It really doesn’t give itself a ton of room to explore any of the ideas in the story and because of that it feels quite one dimensional.

The performances are all average at best except for Pyper Braun who feels like she’s acting in a better movie in a lot of scenes. She acts circles around all of her much older costars and is the only memorable performance in the movie. DeWanda Wise does what she can with the script, but a lot of the time her lines either fall flat or come off very expository.

The story is super uninteresting save for two or three really good scenes interspersed throughout. It feels incredibly bland and a little too safe, except for some parts of the final act that were really cool and leaves you wishing that more of the movie had been like it. There are the typical Blumhouse twists, but for the most part they are all good and one of them is relatively hard to see coming which is surprising for Blumhouse.

The entire movie almost entirely uses practical effects which is great to see in horror. Sometimes the monsters look kind of cheesy, but they look better than if they were a CGI mess. The practical effects really help make the movie at least a little interesting towards the end and overall look very good.

Overall, “Imaginary” is a sad misuse of a really intriguing premise. With a mediocre to bad script, very average performances, and a very uninteresting plot for most of the runtime this can’t be easily recommended to fans of horror.

Directed by Jeff Wadlow

Starring: DeWanda Wise, Tom Payne, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun, Matthew Sato, Veronica Falcón, Betty Buckley

Rated PG-13

Runtime: 104 minutes

My Rating: ★½