Imaginary Review

Blumhouse, the stable of modern-day horror, uses the world of imagination and imaginary friends with Imaginary.

Jessica (DeWanda Wilde) is a children’s book author and artist who moves into her childhood home with her rock star husband, Max (Tom Payne), and stepdaughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). Little Alice develops a friendship with a teddy bear she found in the basement. However, Alice’s imaginary friendship takes a dark turn when Chauncey tells the little girl to do bad things and her behaviour becomes more erratic. To save Alice, Jessica must confront her childhood trauma.

Blumhouse has a reputation as a breeding ground for horror. Many filmmakers like James Wan, Jordan Wan, and Scott Derrickson have made films for them and been given creative freedom. The company has made some great films like Split, Get Out, Upgrade, and The Invisible Man and conjured up franchises like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Purge. But Blumhouse has a high volume of output which means they’re perfectly capable of making duds as well as hits.

Blumhouse has been going through a rough patch. Insidious: The Red Door, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Night Swim were critical bombs and Universal and Blumhouse spent $400 million on getting The Exorcist rights which led to the terror legacy sequel The Exorcist: Believer. There were a number of warning signs before the release of Imaginary: it was distributed by Lionsgate since Universal passed on their first look option, the review embargo was only lifted on the date of release, and it was directed by Jeff Wadlow, best known for directing Kick-Ass 2.

Imaginary ended up being a hotchpotch of ideas used in many other horror films. There is the setup of a family moving into a new home which is a standard in the horror genre. Some examples are Poltergeist, His House, and even Blumhouse’s own Sinister and Night Swim. There was a lot of Poltergeist and The Shining since all these films have a child speaking to an otherworldly entity. Alice even spoke with a raspy voice like Danny in The Shining when speaking as the entity.

Imaginary even borrowed from Blumhouse’s own properties. There were small ideas like one of the characters being a bitchy teenager who invites a potential boyfriend to the family home when she’s meant to be babysitting. The same thing happened in Night Swim. The bigger influence was the Insidious films. Imaginary shared many ideas from Insidious, like a character having suppressed memories about a supernatural instinct, and a character being taken into a parallel world. The Insidious films featured “The Red Door” whilst Imaginary had “The Blue Door.” This must have been more than a coincidence. There was also a bit of the film adaptation of Coraline where a young character gets tempted to stay in a fantasy world where anything was possible.

There was also a bit of The Boogeyman in Imaginary. The Boogeyman focused on a trauma-ridden family who ended up being united against a common enemy and something similar happened to Jessica and her stepdaughters. Jessica and Taylor needed to work together despite the animosity between them.

As a horror film Imaginary was lacklustre. It was rated PG-13 in the US, meaning it couldn’t be too violent or intense. The film tried being ominous with its lingering shots on Chauncey but he was too cute to be threatening. Moments that were meant to be scary or shocking ended up being funny which wasn’t the intention.

Whilst Imaginary was a flawed film, it was an improvement to Night Swim. Firstly, Imaginary’s premise had potential, it didn’t make a silly idea into a serious horror film, i.e. a haunted swimming pool. When the film did enter the Never Ever it did allow the filmmakers to be a bit more visually distinct.

Imaginary was sadly a subpar offering from Blumhouse. It was a film that was unoriginal, formulaic, and unfocused and only flirted with the occasional moments of flair.