IMAGINARY (2024)

Studio:   Lionsgate/Blumhouse
Director: Jeff Wadlow
Writer:   Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb, Jason Oremland
Producer: Jason Blum, Jeff Wadlow
Stars:    DeWanda Wise, Tom Payne, Taegen Burns, Pyper Braun, Matthew Sato, Veronica Falcon, Betty Buckley

Review Score:

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Summary:

A woman must confront a forgotten secret from childhood when her stepdaughter's imaginary friend turns out to be an evil entity intent on luring them both into a supernatural world.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Jessica Barnes, the author/illustrator of award-winning children's book series "Molly Millipede and the Blue Door," wakes from a recurring nightmare of her father Ben morphing into a humanoid spider to attack her. Hoping to mitigate her ongoing trauma, Jessica's husband Max suggests they relocate earlier than planned to Jessica's childhood home, which her mentally disturbed father recently vacated to be transferred to assisted living, and which Jess hasn't been to since she left to live with her grandma at age five. Jess and Max subsequently move into the Louisiana house with Max's daughters from a previous marriage, 15-year-old Taylor and her younger sister Alice.

While playing hide and seek, Alice seemingly finds a stuffed teddy bear in the basement. The bear becomes an imaginary friend named Chauncey that supposedly talks only to Alice.

Taylor briefly notices an old woman observing the house from outside. Liam, a teenage neighbor whom Taylor takes an interest in, says the woman was probably "Old Bag Patterson," who has always had an odd fascination with the house.

Having escaped her psych ward, Max's ex-wife Samantha Dooley sneaks into the house. Samantha has a tea party with Alice, but she also surprise attacks Jess before being taken into custody.

Max leaves to go on tour with his band Burning Cats. The old woman Taylor saw earlier introduces herself to Jess as Gloria Patterson, who babysat for Jess when she was a child. Jess mentions Alice's new imaginary friend, which prompts Gloria to recall that Jess had an imaginary friend, too.

Jess visits her father Ben in his nursing home. When he finally realizes who Jess is, Ben enters an agitated state where he cryptically claims Jess disappeared as a child. He also repeatedly shouts the initials "CB," which Jess later remembers as the name of her imaginary friend, Chauncey Bear.

Taylor invites Liam over while Jess is out. Liam witnesses strange activity that makes him terrified of Chauncey, whom Alice claims promised to take her to the place where he is from.

After Jess discovers Alice has been following a scavenger hunt list from Chauncey that compelled her to do mischievous and painful things, therapist Dr. Soto makes a house call. Jess witnesses Alice bringing her stuffed bear into the session. While her head is turned, Alice seemingly speaks in two voices. Her Chauncey voice says disturbing things that traumatize Alice and worry Dr. Soto.

After the session, Dr. Soto tells Jess about other children with imaginary friends who disappeared after mentioning the "NeverEver," which Alice also referred to as Chauncey's fantasy world. Jess mentions Alice's teddy bear. Confused, Dr. Soto shows Jess a video of Alice's session, which reveals she never had a bear. Upon checking her own photos, Jess realizes only she and Alice can see the Chauncey bear. Jess also finds a childhood picture she drew of a glowing blue door.

Alice collects all of the things Chauncey instructed her to gather for a ritual to open the blue door to the NeverEver. Concerned for Alice's safety, Jess and Taylor discover a secret passage in the basement, but no sign of Alice.

Jess tries telling Taylor she thinks she and Alice had the same imaginary friend. Dismissive of Jessica's claims, Taylor storms off alone to search the neighborhood for her sister.

Taylor encounters Gloria, who shows Taylor drawings Jess made of her imaginary friend along with a "secret place." Gloria adds that the last time she babysat for Jess, she saw Jess inexplicably open a paranormal door and she believes Alice disappeared into the same place. Gloria ultimately convinces Taylor that Alice was abducted by a supernatural spirit. Meanwhile, Jessica realizes Alice's scavenger hunt consisted of similar instructions Chauncey gave to her as a child.

Taylor and Gloria regroup with Jess at the house. With Jessica's memories still foggy, Gloria tells Jess that her father was telling the truth about Jess disappearing as a child, but somehow, she escaped the other world. Gloria, who had been researching supernatural spirits for years after what she witnessed, adds that she thinks the entity wanted to keep Jess in its realm forever.

Jess collects the necessary items and performs the ritual to enter the NeverEver with Taylor and Gloria. In the dream realm, a flashback vision shows that Jessica's father brought her back to reality, but his encounter with the entity drove him mad.

Gloria shuts the door back to reality, revealing she had become a pawn of the entity and was intent on keeping everyone in the NeverEver forever. However, the entity suddenly kills Gloria.

Following a series of harrowing experiences, including an illusion where the entity explains it used Alice as bait because it really wanted Jessica's strong imagination to feed on, Jess and Taylor rescue Alice and open another door back to reality. They seal the door behind them as Alice sets the entity on fire with spilled paint thinner. Jess escapes outside with the two girls while the house goes up in flames.

Jess, Taylor, and Alice search for a hotel where they can stay. In one of the lobbies, they see a young boy talking to an imaginary friend who also has a teddy bear resembling Chauncey.

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Review:

Right up until "Imaginary" started, I half-thought I was pressing Play on the John Krasinski movie "If." I never watched the trailers for either film, so it wasn't at the front of my mind that "If," which also involves make-believe friends, is actually a family-friendly fantasy with cartoonish CGI creations, not a formulaic fright flick from Blumhouse.

At first, I worried these blurred lines might be a sign that I'm not quite as clued into what's happening in horror as I thought. Upon reconsidering, I instead reasoned that my idle conflation says more about how unnoticeable "Imaginary" is because it never blipped bright enough to remain on my radar. I also wished I really was watching "If," because a Ryan Reynolds-led comedy couldn't possibly be more derivative than "Imaginary," a movie that answers the question no one asked, what if the overdone trope of a child meeting an imaginary friend who predictably turns out to be an evil entity was needlessly stretched into a 100-minute feature?

"Imaginary" starts out exactly like every other vanilla thriller built from a boilerplate frame: with a dream sequence that gets things going using a monster-induced jump scare since it'll be another half-hour at best before something scary happens again. This recurring nightmare has plagued Jessica Barnes for years. Having a vivid imagination helped Jess become a successful children's book author/illustrator. It also makes it harder for her to repress the trauma of growing up with a father whose mind went mad when she was only a child.

Dear old dad is on his way to assisted living, so Jessica's husband Max suggests moving back to her childhood home earlier than planned since Jess always called it her "happy place," despite the house being associated with her mother's death, father's dementia, and a horribly harrowing experience she conveniently won't remember until later. Not that you could, but don't get attached to Max. Perhaps the only dusty cliche "Imaginary" doesn't recycle is making Max a traditional "disbelieving spouse" who dismisses odd events as "all in your head." That's because Max drops out of the film at the 30-minute mark to go on tour with his unseen band, rendering him a completely inconsequential character.

Max's abrupt departure shouldn't come as a surprise. His only purpose is to set up Jessica as a stepmother to his two daughters from a previous marriage. Once that's done, he's out. Everything everyone does in the movie is solely in service to the plot. "Imaginary" has zero need for anyone who isn't immediately useful in the current scene. It's like none of the characters existed before the story started, and all of them will evaporate the instant end credits roll.

Everything everyone says is also strictly reserved for exposition. People speak in lines like "My grandma, who I moved in with after my mommy died," and "Well, you were only five when you left," delivering backstory bits via detail-specific dialogue no human being would ever utter in real life. There's even an entire character, the usual "Old Person Who Knows the Dark Secret" chestnut, with no nobler a function than filling in remaining blanks two-thirds of the way through.

Getting back to Jessica's stepdaughters, one of them is 15-year-old Taylor. The other is Taylor's younger sister Alice. Based on how her stereotype plays out in every similar cinematic situation, do you think Taylor is a pouty teenager who's upset about having to leave her friends and move into a new home for the sake of a stepmother she refuses to get along with, or does she take it all in stride with a smile? How about Alice? Is she a sweet and innocent little girl no normal person would want to see bad things happen to, or does "Imaginary" dare to do something different with her?

The answers should be obvious since "Imaginary" doesn't have an original bone in its boring body. Even the toy housing Alice's malevolent play pal looks like a plain teddy bear, with no attempt at all made to create a memorable look capable of haunting anyone's head.

From its standard start to its flaccid finish, and through all of the redundant routine in between, "Imaginary" feels like filler for padding out Pluto TV's free-to-stream library, no better, but possibly worse, than its pedestrian peers in the "adult protects child from supernatural something-or-other" subgenre. It's a small mercy that the movie will be forgotten faster than kids forget their own fictional inventions the second something better comes along. And it really should only take a second.

Review Score: 30

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