IMAGINARY (2024) review

written by: Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb and Jason Oremland
produced by: Jeff Wadlow and Jason Blum
directed by: Jeff Wadlow
rated: PG-13 (for some violent content, drug material and language)
runtime: 104 min.
U.S. release date: March 8, 2024

Everything that once entertained or comforted a child will at some point be turned against them in horror tales. That cuddly dog or friendly cat will turn rabid, toys will come to life and wield knives, animatronic anthropomorphic homicidal animals, and, well, clowns have always been creepy. In “Imaginary,” the second horror flick this year from Blumhouse Studios (after “Night Swim”), the threat is two-fold: an old teddy bear and a vengeful imaginary friend. Indeed, the screenwriters’ imaginations are coming up dry if this is where we’re at. This supernatural pseudo-thriller from director/co-writer Jeff Wadlow (responsible for other Blumhouse turds like “Truth or Dare” and “Fantasy Island”) leans more towards fantasy than anything derived from psychological trauma.

Some credit can be given to the movie’s ambitious visuals, which use practical effects, and the limited budget for CGI. But to have a good movie, there needs to be a good screenplay, and that’s not present here. “Imaginary needs to do something new or different with genre tropes, steer clear of stereotypical characterizations and avoid weak dialogue. What we have here is yet another predictable story that can’t escape its own unintentional ridiculousness.

Somewhere in modern-day Louisiana, Jessica (DeWanda Wise, last seen in “Jurassic World: Dominion”) and Max (Tom Payne) are a newly married couple who decide to move back into her childhood home after acquiring it from her ailing father, who remains in an inpatient care facility. Jessica has her hands full and is doing her best to win over her stepdaughters, teenager Taylor (Taegen Burns) and young Alice (Pyper Bruan), who haven’t entirely accepted her yet. As they move in, Jessica hopes to develop new characters and story ideas for her series of children’s stories that she’s written and drawn as deadlines loom from her editor.

During the move, a curious Alice discovers an old teddy bear hidden away in a secluded area of the home’s basement. She forges an immediate bond with the inanimate object, both of whom develop their own communication, from which she learns his name, Chauncey. Jessica doesn’t remember having the stuffed bear, but notices that Alice has developed an inseparable bond with the plaything. She believes this will help Alice with a troubling past involving her biological mother, Samantha (Alix Angelis). However, things take a strange dark turn when Jessica learns that the games Chauncey has Alice playing (such as a sinister scavenger hunt) may bring her harm.

With guitarist Max away on a music tour, Jessica is left to deal with the increasingly unnerving and nefarious situations orchestrated by Chauncey. This inspires Jessica to enlist the assistance of Alice’s former psychiatrist, Dr. Soto (Veronica Fallon), and a curious neighbor, Gloria (Betty Buckley), who seems to know more about Jessica’s childhood at this address than she does.

“Imaginary” starts with an intriguing cold open that gets our hopes up for some creepy scares. Jessica is chased through a hallway of closed doors by a spider-like creature. She almost manages to escape but then runs into her father (Samuel Salary), who appears to try to save her but is distressed and in pain. She wakes up in bed next to Max, who seems familiar with Jessica having interrupted sleep. That must be why Jessica’s book series revolves around an arachnid named Simon the Spider; however, she’s written the protagonist to be friendly due to her target audience. Obviously, she’s done her best to incorporate her consistent nightmares into her daytime gig, and it’s paid off.

Right away, something is off about the married couple – it’s likely in the casting because they woefully lack chemistry. Maybe screenwriters Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb, and Jason Oremland also picked up on this, so they quickly employed the trope of removing one character so the audience can spend time with one specific character, in this case, our protagonist, Jessica. Unfortunately, their screenplay plays into annoying characterization tropes from the start that are maintained throughout the movie. The stepdaughters are written how you’d expect them: a surly teenager who won’t give Jessica a chance and a young girl who becomes both bratty and weird once her obsession with Chauncey takes over. When Jessica leaves Taylor’s home to look after Alice so she can visit her father, you know something will happen. It’s what we’ve come to expect in these kinds of movies.

It’s never quite clear why Jessica refers to her childhood home as her “happy place,” but maybe that’s because her subconscious has blocked out the time she spent at this home. She had moved there to live with her grandmother after her mother died and quickly moved out when she was five after her father seemingly had a mental snap. The truth of her past is eventually revealed in a third act, which attempts an homage to the supernatural dimensional threats present in some 80s horror flicks but winds up going hilariously off course in every unintentional manner. Not in a genuinely funny manner, but more along the lines of sheer stupidity, primarily regarding the antagonist’s motivations. “Imaginary” wants to go all macabre during the second half, but honestly, it doesn’t have the R-rating to go there.

As much as it tries, “Imaginary” offers nothing truly scary. It’s not frightening for the audience, and viewers won’t ever indeed be afraid of what transpires on screen. There is potential, though, such as when Dr. Soto visits the home to have a recorded session with Alice. The results of that session wind up being pretty trippy, but it never really goes anywhere, resulting in a red herring for the real threat, the nosey neighbor, Gloria. This old lady used to babysit Jessica and shares that she went on to be a writer herself, not of children’s books but of supernatural dimensional mythology (or something of the sort), which plays to the trope of a character knowing more than they initially let on.

The marketing for “Imaginary” promises a killer rampaging teddy bear flick, but that’s all to get butts in seats. Anyone who watches the movie after seeing the trailer will have wished their curiosity ended with the trailer. When Jessica and Taylor enter a dimension known as the “kingdom of imagination” to find Alice, courtesy of Gloria’s suspicious assistance, the production design looks like something from a high school play, and the creature looks like a guy (Dane DiLiegro) in a Sweetums costume. If only the writing could’ve delved more into the trauma related to Jessica’s past with her father or the fractured relationship the girls have with their biological mother.

It would seem Wadlow thinks he’s offering something scarier than the final offering. The movie’s star, Wanda DeWise, tries her best and deserves better, but one actor can’t carry the weight of this endeavor alone. “Imaginary” ultimately becomes a bland and pointless exercise that will no doubt disappoint horror fans wanting to be terrorized. This killer stuffie flick could use some re-stuffing.

RATING: *1/2