Ted Talks
If we’re honest ‘Imaginary’ isn’t lacking imagination so much as a spine.
Imaginary
Director: Jeff Wadlow • Writers: Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb, Jason Oremland
Starring: DeWanda Wise, Pyper Braun, Tom Payne, Betty Buckley, Taegen Burns
USA • 1hr 44mins
Opens Hong Kong April 18 • IIB
Grade: C
I know. I get it. We’re not supposed to say mean things about child actors. But as Alice, Pyper Braun is as unnatural and self-conscious as it gets, and her stiff line readings and mannered performance are scarier than anything else in Jeff Wadlow’s Imaginary.
Alice, her surly older sister Taylor (Taegen Burns) who’s always on the verge of screaming “You’re not my REAL mom!” at Jessica (DeWanda Wise, the best part of Jurassic World Dominion), and the girls’ dad Max (Tom Payne, Jesus on The Walking Dead) move into Jessica’s childhood home while he’s away – get this – on tour with his band. No shit. It’s to give the kids some stability or something. Everyone has issues in Imaginary: Tom’s first wife and the girls’ REAL mother is an addict who’s been institutionalised. Jessica’s dad is in a trauma-induced coma in an assisted living facility, which is why she got the house. Gold star if you think the trauma comes from the house. Taylor’s “rebelling” by hanging out with the neighbourhood pill slinger, and Alice has retreated to the comfort of an imaginary friend: Chauncey the teddy bear.
What we have here is another (the latest?) Blumhouse cheapie, a modest creeper with a decent horror premise that never really reaches the heights it should. Wadlow, the mastermind behind the Fantasy Island reboot film we didn’t need and Truth or Dare, which never quite gained the same traction as the cooler Happy Death Day from a year before it, comes close to crafting a solid horror diversion – until he really doesn’t.
A moment you won’t forget
The idea of our childhood safety blankets coming back to bite us in the ass is a good one that’s also loaded with tremendous potential for psychologising. Naturally Jessica had an imaginary friend (with the same damn name!) when she was a kid in the same house, so at first she thinks nothing of Alice’s. But before you know it, Chauncey’s games have turned sinister, a good word considering how much of Sinister – and Insidious – is in this. Anyway, also lurking in the ’hood is Gloria (Betty Buckley, Split, Preacher), Jessica’s old babysitter from back in the day and that one kook who knows what’s really going on. Alice found the raggedy-ass bear in the basement near a gateway to an MC Escher-designed alternate dimension where all a kid’s wishes might come true, despite the hallucinations it causes – oh, and that guy in a bear suit running around and fucking with everyone. Of course Jessica doesn’t put the pieces together until Alice goes missing – a high point of the film because Braun’s terrible acting vanishes with her.
So far, so B horror. Imaginary isn’t consistently spooky enough for its ambitions (though there are a few decent jump scares), Taylor’s pop culture snappiness gets tired fast, and horror vets are going to spot the story’s internal folklore coming a million miles away. DeWise goes a long way to making it at least watchable; she has a lived-in urbanity that serves the character well (when the script isn’t compelled to make her an idiot) despite the warm and fuzzy career as a kid lit illustrator. But when Jessica calls a shrink for help when Alice starts to go off the rails the film goes with her. There’s a legit “Wait, what?” moment when Dr Soto (Verónica Falcó) asks, totally straight-faced, if Alice has taken up “any new hobbies, like ventriloquism?” and all bets are off. Imaginary starts to crumble like so much recent horror that has a great premise or starts strong (Smile, Talk to Me, Night Swim) and then goes some sort of bonkers in its back half – or less forgivably loses its backbone to the almighty IIB/PG-13/M/15 rating. All of those were trying to capture the same lightning in a bottle M3GAN did, and most failed. At least until Abigail… — DEK