In the battle between Imaginary (now streaming on Starz) and If, what movie would win? The concept of the imaginary friend is apparently a hot one in Hollywood this year, whether the invisible character is benevolent or, well, considerably more lethal. Imaginary gives us the lethal kind, the ones that lurk in the corners of the pre-adolescent mind and take the form of – GASP – an old stuffie that looks like Ted from the movie Ted’s demented grandpa. There’s more to it than that, of course, since Imaginary Realities are just like Dream Realities, and therefore allow filmmakers to either terrify us with deep psychological excursions into fear — or throw random junk at us in the name of entertainment, like this movie does.
IMAGINARY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Hallway lights flicker. Jessica (DeWanda Wise) emerges from a tiny door. Words are scrawled on the walls. The laws of physics are rather loosey-goosey around these here parts, because she can just blink and be in a different room. She’s in the kitchen. There’s something gross on the table, a bloody tooth I think, but that doesn’t matter because suddenly a crazy man is in the room with her and his eyes ain’t right and he transforms into a monster and attacks her and IT WAS ONLY A DREAM. She wakes up next to her husband Max (Tom Payne) and we’re all like the it-was-only-a-dream thing is such trash and there’s still 100 minutes of movie left. Jessica and Max exchange some exposition about how they’re moving out of this dump and into the big lovely house she grew up in now that her dad is in assisted living, so they pack up the kids and head to the ’burbs.
At the new joint, we learn that the kids are his kids and her stepkids: Alice (Pyper Braun) is like five, and her older sis is Taylor the Sullen Teen (Taegen Burns). Max is a touring musician (if I’m reading the T-shirt correctly, I think the band he’s in is called Burning Cats) and Jessica is the award-winning author of the “Milly the Millipede” children’s books. Her memories of this place are hazy – she was young when she moved out to live with her grandmother – and I’m sure it has nothing to do with what subsequently happens in this movie, so move along, move along. We also learn that the girls’ mother is hospitalized with mental illness, and that Alice has been seeing a therapist. Also surely just needless details, no doubt!
The weirdness begins when l’il Alice wanders down to the basement and finds a little door in the wall and behind the door is an old teddy bear. She names him Chauncey and he’s her new friend. At night, Jessica giggles when she hears Alice talking to Chauncey and using her voice to have him talk back. So cute. Also in the basement is a box of Jessica’s old things, drawings and such, and surely they aren’t disturbing at all, sitting there like they are, representing her childhood traumas. There’s a neighbor kid Liam (Matthew Soto), who Taylor flirts with, and another neighbor, Gloria (Betty Buckley), who used to babysit Jessica. She was too young to remember that, but Gloria remembers, “You were SO imaginative!” Uh. Oh.
Well, it turns out that Chauncey the bear is a real SOB. Our first clue is how the score rumbles ominously whenever he’s on camera, the subject of Disconcerting Zoom Shots. Chauncey seems to be manipulating poor Alice, messing with her mind, making her hurt herself or be violent, stuff like that. After a disturbing incident with a rusty nail – yikes! – the therapist (Veronica Falcon) stops by for a visit so she can navigate the complications of group therapy with a child and her best stuffie pal. And what the doc witnesses is pretty upsetting. I’ll stop there. No spoilers. You really should experience for yourself how excruciatingly stupid this gets.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is an unholy conglomeration of Inside Out, Alice in Wonderland, Ted, Child’s Play, and shitty haunted house movies like The Amityville Horror or The Haunting in Connecticut.
Performance Worth Watching: Wise is a pro. She was pretty good in The Harder They Fall. You should go watch that!
Memorable Dialogue: The doc dishes up a doozy: “Has Alice taken up any new hobbies lately? Ventriloquism?”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Several references to Inside Out figment Bing Bong cannot save Imaginary from being an overstuffed, convoluted quasi-horror slopfest. I think it’s supposed to be funny like M3gan, and sometimes it is, when the camera fixates on Chauncey’s dead, dead button eyes and lays heavy on the droney doom-score like the composer dozed off face down on the keyboard. But otherwise, this is an excruciatingly annoying movie: random corner-of-the-frame outta-focus monsters, lame jump scares, characters explaining things, characters doing inexplicable things, characters unable to explain themselves, etc., until it concludes with all the characters scampering around on cheap, ridiculous sets that recall an M.C. Escher work if he was getting paid per checkerboard square.
Imaginary a JOURNEY through the MIND, in all its complications and curlicues and switchbacks. I mean, have you ever seen a human brain? It’s all twisty and weird! And this movie metaphoricalizes that! Director Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2, Fantasy Island, ugh, just ugh) doesn’t lean into the silliness enough, or find a consistent tone, or do anything beyond cultivating hysteria, exploiting dopey twists, urging us to chase red herrings or throwing things at the wall to see if any of it sticks. And there it all is, sliding down, making a mess, puddling on the floor. This movie is batshit in all the wrong ways.
Our Call: Imagine a better movie. It’s not hard. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
