Imaginary Dares to Ask the Question, "What if the Snuggle Fabric Bear Was Evil?"

If you like horror movies that aren't scary, boy do I have a movie for you!

PG-13 horror movies rank high on my list of cinematic pet peeves. It is possible to make genuinely scary movies that are PG-13, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. PG-13 movies are the film equivalent of near-beer: weak and watered down. 

Blumhouse had a surprise hit with the sassy and satisfying M3GAN and followed it up with the abysmal but wildly successful Five Nights at Freddy’s, which grossed nearly three hundred million dollars on a modest budget. 

Now, the hottest and hippest name in horror is back with another cynical PG-13-rated fright flick for people who like the idea of horror films but do not want to be scared. 

If you like your horror films to be convoluted, overlong, and fright-free, then boy, oh boy, is Imaginary for you. 

Blumhouse has made a lot of money asking, “What if various elements of your childhood were evil?” 

What if Chuck E. Cheese was EVIL? That was essentially the premise of Five Nights at Freddy’s, both in video game and movie form. M3GAN, in turn, asked, “What if a smart doll was EVIL?” Now Imaginary is here to posit a question mankind has been pondering for millennia: what if a teddy bear or imaginary friend was EVIL? How crazy would that be? 

Imaginary stars DeWanda Wise as Jessica, a successful children’s book author and illustrator with a past chockablock with trauma. She’s married to Max (Tom Payne), a handsome musician with a pair of daughters from a previous marriage, rebellious fifteen-year-old Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun) a spooky little girl.

Taylor bitterly resents Jessica’s attempts to win them over. Alice, meanwhile, develops an unhealthy attachment to a creepy bear named Chauncey. 

I do not think it is right to criticize child actors. They’re children, after all. So, I am not going to say anything about Braun’s performance. I’m n’t saying anything! You will NEVER know how I felt about her acting because I am moot on the subject. 

Like many old toys, the teddy bear is creepy, buthe'ss not that creepy. The world of horror is filled with much creepier playthings. 

At first, Jessica and Max are inexplicably charmed by themoppet'ss relationship with her imaginary friend. The little girl acts out both sides of her conversations with Chauncey. The relationship starts relatively harmless but gets darker and darker as the malevolent stuffie with the cold, dead eyes challenges his friend to a series of increasingly dangerous stunts as part of a secret scavenger hunt. 

After hooking up with Chauncey, Alice turns secretive and defensive. She no longer seems to have agency or free will. The creepy stuffed animal is calling the shots and steering the ship. 

Jessica watches this development with amusement, then concern, and finally, something approaching terror. 

I was a little worried about spoilers, but the film's ostensible twist is laid out in the Internet Movie Database’s two-sentence plot summary. Nevertheless, stop reading now if you do not want the film spoiler. 

Like Five Nights at Freddy's, Imaginary is all buildup and precious little in the way of payoff. A good hour of the film is devoted to Jessica watching her stepdaughter and her evil new companion and wondering whether there’s something creepy and wrong about the ostentatiously creepy and inappropriate toy. 

The big twist is that Chauncey is—and I hope you'ree seated and have your monocle fastened tightly because this is so shocking you will faint, shattering your monocle in the process—imaginary. Just like the film’s title! 

Jessica has been seeing something that isn't there because Chauncey isn’t new. Instead, he's Jessica'’s imaginary childhood friend. 

As a creepy old lady tells us, and by extension Jessica and Taylor, in all cultures, there are spirits that befriend children and help guide them through life. In our country, these spirits are commonly referred to as imaginary friends. 

We are told that the bond between a child and their imaginary friend is generally benign, but when it is ruptured unexpectedly, it can turn dark. Imaginary's premise isn’t terribly different from Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, the worst film of 2023 and a low point for Western civilization, but with considerably few disembowelings. 

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey could use substantially fewer disembowlings, while Imaginary would benefit from more graphic violence. 

This is our sorry payoff for a solid hour of nothing. In its dodgy third act, Imaginary goes all-in on convoluted mythology as Jessica tries to save her daughter in Chauncey's world. 

These CGI-heavy sequences suggest lesser set pieces from Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. It is here that Jessica discovers Chauncey'’s true nature. In our world, he is an ostensibly cute little teddy bear. In his world, however, he is more analogous to the Cocaine Bear, but without all the cocaine. 

Imaginary is filled with scenes, subplots, and characters begging for the cutting room floor, yet it lasts an endless, interminable 104 minutes. There's no reason this can't be resolved in 90 minutes at most, but like Five Nights at Freddy's, Imaginary is way too fascinated by its own backstory. 

The movie wants to scare us with a story about the lasting effects of childhood trauma and the way they infect our adult lives but succeeds only in being tasteless and almost impressively non-frightening. 

Blumhouse might delude itself into thinking that it has made a horror movie that will resonate with adults and children alike, but really, they've made a pointless and derivative time-waster for nobody. 

One star out of Four