RATING: 3.5 out of 5
“Imaginary” (2024) is a supernatural horror film released in theaters directed by Jeff Wadlow, telling the troubling story of Jessica (DeWanda Wise) returning to her childhood home, which she left at a young age and has no memory of, with her new husband Max (Tom Payne) and his two daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun).
Jessica struggles to be a mother to her two new stepdaughters. While Taylor basically rejects Jessica as her mother, Alice finds a teddy bear named Chaucer in the basement. Everyone except Alice believes Alice’s new imaginary friend to be only that. But Alice, under the guidance of Chaucer, pushes herself to do more and more extreme things that hurt others and herself. While trying to figure out what is happening to Alice, Jessica gets a rude awakening to what Chaucer is and what really happened when she was younger.
The writing of “Imaginary” is impeccable. Every scene is suspenseful and draws the viewer deeper into the story of what happened in Jessica’s past and what exactly Chaucer is. The mystery is introduced early in a very alluring manner. Each scene with Chaucer is very captivating as the audience and characters learn more about the creature.
Although the movie does well to keep the audience interested with action and mystery, it’s just not scary. The movie doesn’t have many jump scares or creepy scenes, and in the few that it had, none of them felt horrifying. The film relies on a not-so-imaginary friend and does little to develop any sense of horror.
The bear is treated like any simple single-minded creature and doesn’t have many supernatural elements beyond being supposedly imaginary. And it doesn’t have an animalistic-bloodthirsty-creature-from-another-world angle either. So in the end, there’s no clear direction on how exactly the creature is supposed to be scary. It relies on viewers to just find a moving teddy bear inherently scary and does not cultivate any further sense of fear.
The biggest problem in this movie is that it doesn’t explore the premise of an imaginary friend very well. There’s no twist or anything that would set it apart from literally any children’s horror story about the concept. It would be much more effective if the teddy bear plays on the fears of its victims or builds dread through relentless nightmares.
“Imaginary” is a great movie to watch for fun and then forget about. It’s an unoriginal horror trope, and its lack of deeper exploration of the monster prevents the movie from having any value besides being simple entertainment.