There’s a lot to unpack in the new horror film from Blumhouse, which seems designed to provide fodder for family therapy sessions throughout the country.
The recently married Jessica (DeWanda Wise, Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It) is dealing with a father (Samuel Salary) who has withdrawn into a near-comatose state and resides in an assisted living facility after a traumatic event many years earlier. Her rock musician husband Max (Tom Payne, Prodigal Son) has an ex-wife who lapsed into addiction and insanity and has been institutionalized after harming one of her children. His teenage daughter Taylor (Taegen Burns) resents her new stepmother and acts out in typical adolescent fashion, and his little girl Alice (Pyper Braun), who bears the scars of her mother’s attack, takes solace in her new best friend Chauncey, a ratty teddy bear whom she found in a closet. In this troubled extended clan, it’s the bear who seems the most well-adjusted, despite the fact that he has the disturbing habit of popping up unexpectedly in odd places.
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Imaginary
When Max has to leave the family to go on tour with his band, he decides that the best thing would be for Jessica and the kids to move back into her childhood home. It’s supposedly the source of her happiest childhood memories, although it’s clear that Jessica, who writes a children’s book series called “Molly Millipede” and suffers from recurring nightmares featuring giant spiders, might have wanted a safer retreat.
The new house is where Alice finds the bear, who at first seems harmless enough. Everyone keeps referring to it as Alice’s “imaginary friend,” much like the one that Jessica herself had in the same house many years earlier. Alice seems happily content with Chauncey, sitting down for a tea party with him and playing hide and seek. But their close relationship grows increasingly disturbing, especially when he makes her engage in a scavenger hunt that turns dangerous.
Up to this point, Imaginary feels pretty standard for a low-budget horror effort, providing a moderate level of spookiness and a few cheap jump scares to remind teenagers why they bought their tickets. But the film directed by horror veteran Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare, Fantasy Island) and co-written by him and Greg Erb and Jason Oremland starts to go off the rails around the time that a concerned Jessica brings in a child therapist (Veronica Falcon) to talk to Alice and Chauncey. After her session with the little girl, the clearly rattled shrink inquires, “Has she taken up any new hobbies lately? Ventriloquism?” Cue the audience guffaws, which return soon afterward when Jessica announces, “I gotta destroy that bear!” Which is very much not a line destined to join the horror pantheon of “I see dead people” and “They’re here!”
But wait, it gets better, although for the sake of avoiding spoilers too many more plot details won’t be revealed. Suffice it to say that Alice soon goes missing, that her imaginary friend is not so imaginary, and that everyone winds up in an alternate dimension resembling an M.C. Escher drawing and featuring various monsters including a very large guy in a bear suit.
And then there’s the supporting character of Gloria, a creepy old woman who wanders around the neighborhood at all hours and seems desperate for conversation. It turns out that she’s Jessica’s former babysitter and has inside knowledge of her past nightmarish experiences. She’s also an author who specializes in the subject of imaginary friends, which comes in very handy when the group decides to offer a benediction to summon a spirit from another realm. Nostalgia buffs will enjoy the fact that Gloria is played by Betty Buckley, who established her horror bona fides so many years ago in the original Carrie (and more recently in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split). The veteran actress plays the role to the hilt, clearly relishing the opportunity to enjoy the sort of late-career renaissance in horror films as such Hollywood legends as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland.
Imaginary, which starts out as a relatively low-key suspenser with intriguing psychological depth, eventually succumbs to the inanities plaguing so many recent horror efforts (like the killer pool in the same company’s Night Swim). It’s a shame because Wise delivers a very strong performance as the beleaguered heroine and has fine support from the younger players, with Braun haunting as the little girl desperate for a friend, even one in the form of a not particularly cuddly teddy bear. She would have been better off with Ted.
