By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring DeWanda Wise, Taegen Burns and Pyper Braun
Directed by Jeff Wadlow
Written by Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb and Jason Oremland
Lionsgate/Blumhouse
Imagine, if you will, a movie whose first half rehashes every convention of the modern suburban horror film, and whose final act plays like an unholy marriage of HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II and Pixar’s INSIDE OUT (which gets numerous shout-outs in the dialogue). Well, you don’t have to imagine it, because it’s not an imaginary film, it’s a film called IMAGINARY. If that was a little convoluted, well, it’s an appropriate way to introduce a review of IMAGINARY, which isn’t quite as overcomplicated as director Jeff Wadlow’s previous FANTASY ISLAND, though it comes close.
This is another one of those horror films in which the characters spend so much time discussing and explaining what’s going on, it’s surprising they have time to be scared by it. Early on, we’re introduced to a character who is disparagingly referred to as “Old Bag Patterson,” whose name is actually Gloria (Betty Buckley–Betty Buckley?), but who should perhaps instead be called “Old Lady Exposition,” because her only real function is to spend many minutes explicating both the domestic and supernatural background of what’s plaguing IMAGINARY’s central family.
In a setup rather similar to that of Blumhouse’s previous (and, says I, underappreciated) NIGHT SWIM, a brood consisting of Mom, Dad, sullen and resentful teenage daughter and a younger child arrive at their new house where Bad Stuff awaits below ground. In this case, it’s children’s book author/illustrator Jessica (DeWanda Wise) moving into her childhood home with new husband Max (Tom Payne) and his kids Taylor (Taegen Burns) and little Alice (Pyper Braun). His former wife apparently did something bad to Alice that has left her with burn scars on one arm, though that’s one of the only things the movie neglects to explain in great detail. And speaking of burn scars, that house is on Elm Street in Springwood, a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reference eliciting comparisons that do IMAGINARY no favors.
Instead of a razored glove in the furnace, Alice discovers in the basement a teddy bear that calls itself Chauncey, though only to her, in a voice only she can hear. Anyone sitting down to watch this movie will know that the “imaginary friend” conversing with Alice through Chauncey is a malevolent spirit, and a prologue nightmare scene establishes that Jessica has a history with it as well. Indeed, even though Jessica claims her memories of growing up are happy ones, the fact that her mother died when she was very young and her father is blind, severely troubled and confined to a nursing home make it obvious she’s carrying some heavy psychological baggage, which will come to the fore as Chauncey’s influence on Alice becomes increasingly pernicious.
Pretty much everything about IMAGINARY, in fact, is obvious; there’s very little here that can’t be predicted once the basics are established, and the details are familiar from the dozens of haunted house/object movies that have come out over the last couple of decades. Wadlow stages a number of low-impact jump scares, and some of the dialogue is unintentionally risible. In particular, a psychiatrist’s query, “Has Alice taken up any hobbies lately? Ventriloquism?” bids to become this month’s “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
This line comes up after an encounter that proves to be not quite what it seems, in a twist that only serves to confuse matters and is one of several moments where IMAGINARY tries to be too tricky for its own good. The idea of a child’s beloved plaything going bad was done with much more panache and awareness in Blumhouse’s previous M3GAN, and the characters are either walking collections of neuroses or functional pawns in the overly busy plot. Max in particular, who could have been a catalyst for some dramatic story turns, is particularly uninteresting, and it’s no surprise when the movie abandons and forgets about him in the second half.
Eventually, IMAGINARY gets to that protracted climax in a netherworld that’s both elaborate and underimagined, and based on what has come before, it won’t surprise any viewer that Wadlow and co. drop a couple of false endings on the way to the closing credits. Those credits include one for a “Cultural Awareness Producer,” who might have done well to make IMAGINARY’s creators aware that too much of their film has been seen many times before.
