Imagination is one of the foundations for establishing horror. Watch almost any horror film, and at some point, they’ll be a moment when it forces the audience’s imagination do the work. In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic Psycho, it’s when Norman Bates looks into the camera with a menacing smile on his face, letting the audience only imagine what else he’s capable of. In John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980), it’s whenever the fog engulfs parts of the town and the audience is left to imagine what lurks within. Even indie horror film Skinamarink (2022) thrives from forcing its audience to imagine what the entity is stalking the children in the house by never showing and only implying. But what about a horror film literally called; Imaginary?
Kick-Ass 2 (2010) director Jeff Wadlow’s new horror Imaginary attempts to follow this archetype, but mostly fails to capture the same effect. The film centres around children’s author Jessica (DeWanda Wise) and her husband Max’s (Tom Payne) family; mostly his children Alice and Taylor (Pyper Braun and Taegen Burns). Once Alice discovers a harmless-looking Teddy bear in the basement of Jessica’s childhood home, things about Jessica’s childhood begin to unravel and the family is placed into a state of supernatural jeopardy. The film is produced by Jason Blum’s head honcho horror company Blumhouse Productions, the company behind recent films M3GAN (2022), Five Night’s at Freddy’s (2023), and Night Swim (2024). Unfortunately, Imaginary seems to be an amalgamation of the weaker aspects of those films, with some acceptable moments scattered throughout.
Similarly to the especially disappointing Night Swim, Imaginary isyet another great concept from Blumhouse executed with little precision. Kids having imaginary friends is a great concept for a horror film. The idea of a child having an invisible entity they can talk to that adults can’t see opens many doors of possibility for tension and horror. After all, good horror films often leave the audience to imagine the horror which is much more effective. Chauncey the bear seemed to me as Blumhouse attempting to create another modern horror icon to match the likes of Annabelle the doll or M3gan. Whilst his presence did conjure moments of malice and tension through the unlikely innocence of a girl’s imaginary friend, it was too toothless and infrequent to have a lasting effect. I understand studios prefer to keep a film’s rating as low as possible to increase its audience, but there were no scenes in this film that were particularly shocking. There is only one death and it is mostly off-screen, which leaves the only content warning of this film to be ‘Strong threat’.
I also felt this film convoluted the concept a little too much. Horror movies focusing on the story and characters too much has always dragged the horror aspect down, and in Imaginary it not only does that but also asks too much of its audience. Without spoiling, it doesn’t clearly set the boundaries of its story and world. I had several questions leaving the cinema, and it had clearly tried to borrow things from better horror films such as IT (2017), Insidious (2010), and even the Annabelle films. Granted, there are promising moments scattered throughout this film. The things it borrows from Insidious in particular I appreciated; that subtle, blink and you’ll miss it type horror always grabs my attention. There’s also a scene with the older sibling Taylor and the bear later in the film which was genuinely really unsettling, and was probably the best scene in the movie.
Perhaps Blumhouse need to start taking notes from more indie horror films such as last year’s Talk to Me and When Evil Lurks; let their characters be enveloped in the horror rather than spending too much time establishing layers and a story world. None of the characters are particularly likeable in Imaginary, and some dialogue moments border on horror-comedy, which I cannot imagine was the intention. There are some promising moments in Imaginary, and it establishes an interesting concept, but the dodgy dialogue, paper-thin characters, and convoluted story hugely let this one down.
G does Films 