Rating: 3/10
** This review contains spoilers.**
“Imaginary,” released March 8, is the latest film by Blumhouse and comes off a disappointing run with “Night Swim,” the studio’s first release of 2024. Despite promising trailers, the film failed to bring any new twists or turns to an already oversaturated genre of clichéd doll horror films.
Describing the film’s plot as generic would be an understatement. Jessica (DeWanda Wise) moves back into her childhood home with her new husband Max (Tom Payne) and stepdaughters Alice (Pyper Braun) and Taylor (Taegen Burns). When Alice finds a stuffed bear named Chauncey, her strange behavior may prove that her imaginary friend is more sinister than she believes.
With such a basic premise, this could have been the film’s saving grace, potentially adding more original characters or plot twists to spice up such a familiar storyline. Unfortunately, this film not only brought nothing new to the plot but somehow made things worse, with bizarre dialogue that could have easily been mistaken for a prompt written by ChatGPT.
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Given the film is based on imaginary friends, the worldbuilding was a bit of a stretch to catch onto, especially with the heavy backstory on the Never Ever realm, a place where imaginary friends are real. The story takes a turn when Chauncey ultimately kidnaps Alice as bait to get back at Jessica for abandoning him from her childhood.
Outside of the underlying tension between Jessica and Taylor, there was absolutely no development given to Jessica as the main character, especially with her convenient amnesia surrounding Chauncey. Her struggles with her past and nightmares about her father were botched in the film’s finale, poorly explaining how Chauncey had caused him to lose his mind which overall felt very unoriginal.
The most glaring addition written to spoon-feed the audience was Gloria (Betty Buckley), Jessica’s neighbor and former babysitter who appears to have dedicated her life to studying imaginary friends and evil spirits. Her only purpose in the film — to dump information on the audience about Chauncey and the Never Ever realm — could not have been more overstated if she had looked straight into the camera.
Considering the many opportunities for mindbending visuals or even gore, the film is pretty tame in presenting the unlimited possibilities of imagination that could have occurred in the Never Ever realm. This could have been chalked up to the PG-13 rating, but this is certainly no excuse for a film and had the potential to provide a decent horror experience.
Chauncey is by far the only real spectacle in the film given any effort in special effects, but pales in comparison following the powerhouse that was “M3GAN” (2023), which was certainly superior in bringing suspense as a new face for doll horror.
Despite a relatively successful streak in 2023 with films like “M3GAN,” “Totally Killer” and “Five Nights At Freddy’s,” it seems like Blumhouse has yet to bring any real terrors to the screen already a third into the year. The jumpscares in “Imaginary” were not only predictable but brought nothing to solidify the film as memorable or unique in its presentation.
While it can be said the film had some interesting visual effects here and there, it certainly was not enough to give Chauncey any memorable moments or standing in the long lineup of doll horror icons.
