Onto the trash pile of middling killer-children’s-toy horrorshows one must now toss Imaginary, a lifeless hodgepodge of the hoariest cliches the genre has to offer. Lifting liberally from countless scary movies (with Henry Selick’s Coraline near the top of that list), this throwaway features creepy basements, harrowing nightmares, unsettling old ladies, fuzzy memories, bratty teens, helpful therapists, mentally unstable adults who can sense the supernatural, eerily bouncing balls, spooky shadow lanterns that play unnerving lullabies, foreboding kids’ drawings, uncanny family photographs, witchy magic rituals, secret doorways, inhuman specters, alternate universes, giant monsters, and M.C. Escher dreamscapes. Creakiest of all its hackneyed devices, though, is its villain: a teddy bear whose malevolent designs are about as routine as its appearance is mundane.
Directed by Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare), who co-wrote its script with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, Imaginary, which hit theaters Mar. 8, revolves around Jessica (DeWanda Wise), an author of a series of children’s novels about a cheery millipede and her evil arachnid nemesis. Jessica is married to musician Max (Tom Payne) and is stepmother to his daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun), the former a petulant 15-year-old who can’t stand Jessica and the latter a young girl reeling from the figurative loss of her mother, who suffers from some undefined psychological problems and is the apparent cause of arm burns that have left Alice fearful of fire. At the story’s outset, all of them move into the home where Jessica lived until she was five with her mom (who died of cancer) and dad (who’s now blind and in a nursing home). Still, she admits she can barely remember her time in the abode, for reasons that are quite obviously related to the forthcoming mayhem.
No sooner has this foursome established themselves in the house than Alice is venturing into the poorly lit, junk-filled basement to discover a tiny door, behind which sits a stuffed bear that tells her—in dialogue that only she can hear—his name is Chauncey. While this plaything hasn’t previously made an on-screen appearance, Imaginary has already depicted an identical door in an intro dream sequence in which Jessica flees an enormous spider and navigates a smeary blue hallway. Alice endlessly talks to Chauncey, who always claims to be very, very hungry, and Jessica and Max initially find this to be both cute and a heartening sign that the girl is getting over whatever (undescribed) trauma she suffered with her biological mom. However, it’s not long before Alice’s fun and games with Chauncey—highlighted by a scavenger hunt around their property—turns weird, what with the bear demanding that Alice hurt herself by slamming her hand into a rusty nail.
As Jessica continues working on her latest novel (which she also illustrates) and Alice chats away with her new imaginary BFF, Max departs the premises (and film) for a music tour and Taylor sneers at Jessica and flirts with next door neighbor Liam (Matthew Sato), who comes over when no one else is around and tries to ply her with drugs and booze. Alice doesn’t like Liam and neither, it turns out, does Chauncey. Yet despite having the bear play frightening tricks on the boy, Imaginary is too weak-kneed to depict anyone actually suffering—until, that is, its finale, during which one unfortunate character is slaughtered, albeit behind closed doors in order to let the film maintain its PG-13 rating. Of course, gruesomeness and ultra-violence need not be employed to generate scares, but modesty doesn’t get Wadlow anywhere, his material devoid of a single moment that registers as surprising or startling, much less terrifying.
The stranger things get, the more Jessica begins suspecting that Chauncey is the culprit, thereby instigating a visit from a psychologist (Veronica Falcón) whose input further makes the heroine’s head spin. Fortunately for Jessica, her former babysitter Gloria (Betty Buckley) remains nearby and can provide all sorts of answers about Jessica’s past and, in particular, her own obsession with an imaginary friend. That fact, coupled with her unstable father’s comment about her disappearance as a kid, suggests that Jessica knows Chauncey or, at least, the spectral fiend that lurks in the house, potentially pulling the teddy bear’s strings. Gloria is one of those oh-so-convenient peripheral figures who’s an expert in the very chaos taking place, and courtesy of Buckley’s awkward and wooden performance, she comes across as a caricature of a typical horror type, all exposition and no personality.
DeWanda Wise
Parrish Lewis/LionsgateWhether encased in comforting sunshine or drenched in malignant darkness, Imaginary’s visuals are flat and derivative, and its dialogue is even more functional, full of repeated statements (“You should never have to leave the things you love”) that don’t mean anything on their own or in any larger narrative context. Stuck playing a cipher, Wise proves a serviceable if unremarkable lead, and everyone else similarly goes through the motions with forgettable competence. Chauncey, on the other hand, is as non-descript as they come, a ratty brown teddy with blank black eyes who doesn’t move, speak, or do anything calculating or menacing. In terms of sheer clumsiness, however, nothing tops the larger-than-life beasts that eventually stalk Jessica and company, given that they look like actors wearing shoddy homemade costumes. There’s something to be said for a 2024 film refusing to resort to the usual blurry and indistinct CGI that has become mainstream horror directors’ favorite tool, yet the cruddiness of these creatures nonetheless renders the big set pieces a joke.
In its race toward a lame fake-out finale and, afterwards, an even more lackluster real one, the film cribs shamelessly from Coraline while evoking everything from Magic and Child’s Play to Dolls, A Nightmare on Elm Street and M3GAN. The central conceit of Wadlow’s tale is that imaginary friendships are two-way streets, and humans must treat them as such lest their make-believe buddies get bitter and covetous. Though that idea has some paranormal potential, the director executes it with all the invention and excitement of a paper bag. Striving to be hip by frequently invoking the name of Inside Out’s beloved Bing Bong, Imaginary proves a dreary ding dong of a thriller.
