Creeping its way into UK and US cinemas from today is the supernatural horror movie, Imaginary. The film – directed, co-written, and co-produced by Jeff Wadlow – stars DeWanda Wise, Pyper Braun, Taegen Burns, and Dane DiLiegro, and follows the story of a young stepmother who starts to become concerned about the relationship between her stepdaughter and a teddy bear.
In the movie, artist and stepmother to two, Jessica, moves with her family into her old childhood home. Following a traumatic time in her own life, as well as the lives of her family, Jessica looks at this as a fresh new start for everyone.
Shortly after moving in, youngest stepdaughter, Alice, suggests she and Jessica play a game of hide-and-seek. Jessica agrees, but a few seconds into the game she gets called away on a work call.
With Jessica preoccupied, Alice explores the house where she comes upon a seemingly misplaced teddy bear. She picks up the bear, decides to be its friend, and addresses it by the name of Chauncey.
From this moment on, Alice has a new friend in Chauncey, and she regularly speaks to him. No one in the house bats an eyelid at Alice’s new pal, as she appears to be happy.
But when Alice is around Chauncey, she begins to act strangely, and starts to put herself in danger. This causes a great deal of concern for Jessica, who suspects there may be more to Chauncey than just stuffing and imagination.
Every once in a while, a horror movie comes along with some good ideas and a great deal of potential, and the combination of the two makes you really want it to work. Thing is, these ideas and that potential isn’t quite enough to get it over the finish line, and you end up with something which is decent in places but is not quite what it could be.
This is Imaginary in a nutshell. Imaginary is a film which I so desperately want to tell you is good, but in truth it is only so-so.
It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. Imaginary is a jumble of ideas, a hodgepodge if you will, which attempts too much and struggles to pull any of it off successfully.
To be clear, I wasn’t sat in the writers’ room when this film was being penned (no one thought to ask me), so I can only imagine the following is how things went down, but I suspect writers Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb, and Jason Oremland wrote down a whole bunch of thoughts and ideas on scraps of paper, then tossed them into a basket. Once the basket was full, they pulled out a handful of the scraps and decided to write the script for Imaginary based on what they had in their hands.
I’m presuming all this, because this would explain the somewhat erratic nature of the movie. It would certainly account for the mish-mashed narrative which can’t seem to decide who or what to focus on.
I don’t want to give away any major spoilers, but Imaginary is a bit messy to say the least, and especially when it comes to the big villain. Is the film about a sinister teddy bear, is it about some kind of paranormal entity, is it about childhood trauma, or should audiences be paying more attention to the human characters instead?
There is an answer to this question, but whilst watching the film there are times when things become very blurry. It’s almost as if Wadlow, Erb, and Oremland were never quite sure about the finer details when compiling the script and opted to go for a bit of everything instead and hope for the best.
Unfortunately, the ‘bit of everything’ approach is what lets this movie down. It also leads to far too much predictability.
There are parts of this movie which feel as if they are not only signposted, they are bleedin’ obvious, and yet we the audience are supposed to be as surprised when certain plot details are revealed. Newsflash, no one is surprised!
OK, so all of the above doesn’t paint Imaginary in a very good light, yet I said it’s not a bad movie, and it isn’t. Step back from some of the messier aspects of the narrative, and there are elements of the film which work very well.
DeWanda Wise is great in the lead role as Jessica, while Pyper Braun does an absolutely fine job as Alice. The two become a big focus of the film and don’t put a foot wrong.
Outside of the casting, Imaginary has a couple of creepy moments which do what they need to do and this should please some audiences. The film isn’t particularly scary, but it conveys the right atmosphere and this helps.
Imaginary also has some good ideas. As noted above, it attempts to run with too many of them, but this isn’t to say they are bad.
The film should have picked one key idea and gone with that. However, looking at it objectively, the ideas on offer all have potential.
Imaginary also gets some plus points for the set design. The final act in particular benefits greatly from some strong visuals.
Again, I don’t want to drop any spoilers, but towards the end of the film the central characters get a bit of a location change and what is served up is good! The film might be bumpy at times, but the big finale is where the movie is at its strongest – even if the finale feels like it belongs in a different movie to the creepy bear narrative that forms the bulk of the picture.
Overall, I can’t describe Imagination as anything other than a flawed, jumbled, mixed offering of a horror film. Some aspects work (and I like them very much), some don’t, and the end result is a film which is neither one thing nor the other.
I believe Imagination will find its audience, but it is a film which needs work. The script needed another pass before cameras started rolling, so approach it with the knowledge that it is a bit all over the place and you may have an uneven journey along the way.
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