Review: Imaginary

Director:  Jeff Wadlow

Stars:  DeWanda Wise, Taegen Burns, Betty Buckley

Three weeks ago, when I made the dubious decision to go and see Madame Web at the multiplex, they trailed Imaginary before it, and I was a little taken aback. The coming attractions before ‘major’ 12A certificate comic book movies don’t usually include upcoming horror flicks. The audience in the theatre was mixed and some very young. This seemed like a leftfield pick to promote in said space. Returning from the same cinema, and from Imaginary itself, it all makes perfect sense. This is very much a gateway scary movie designed and tailored to a set of viewers who will be discovering the genre for the first time.

Co-authored and directed by Jeff Wadlow (who has been at the helm of some conspicuous atrocities in the genre of late), Imaginary centres around well-meaning step-mum Jessica (DeWanda Wise). A children’s storybook writer who has recently married touring musician Max (Tom Payne), Jessica is still fighting the demons of her past in her nightmares, centred around the same beasties she’s used as inspiration for her successful book series. In spite of a traumatic childhood there, she moves Max and his daughters Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun) into her old suburban family home where the youngest, Alice, quickly braves the terrors of the basement and locates a teddy bear she names Chauncey.

Alice’s attachment to Chauncey is typical of a child her age, and Jessica enjoys watching the girl flex her imagination with the bear, even as the scavenger hunt Alice engages in quickly starts veering toward the odd; her checklist of items an unusual laundry list for a child’s game. A slowly accumulating series of spooky events around the house lead both Taylor and Jessica to grave suspicions when it comes to Chauncey, a seemingly inanimate bear in the Annabelle mode of dubious toys.

It’s a fairly by-the-numbers first hour, dotted with predictable and familiar ‘boo’ moments from many horror franchises (not least the Conjuring universe), one that rests a significant amount of screen time on the shoulders of young Pyper Braun. We can kindly chalk up her performance and its limitations to age and inexperience. The same leeway can’t be applied to the strangely offbeat register of the adult players, however, and it is here that the intentions behind Imaginary reveal themselves. Wise, Payne and particularly Betty Buckley – an overbearing expositional presence as the kooky ol’ lady next door – play their respective roles with a strong whiff of Well-Meaning Children’s TV Presenter.

The backstory and emotional beats of Imaginary aren’t hard to figure out. Wadlow coneys them decently enough through visual storytelling. But the script – seemingly written with younger viewers in mind – doesn’t afford us the benefit of the doubt. Every spurious detail is hammered out in dialogue which often feels handed down by committee. Actors lip-syncing to notes from a focus group. It quickly becomes a patronising experience, and Imaginary dawdles so it can verbalise information already conveyed to us. This, ironically in this instance, goes against one of the most fundamental mechanics of horror; everything is more effective if you let the audience use their imagination.

Thanks to this untrusting, remedial approach, it takes quite a while for Imaginary to progress anywhere substantive. When it does, an appreciably mounted final act plays out like a fun mix of Insidious and A Nightmare on Elm Street, as Jessica and Taylor confront Alice’s menacing make-belief fiend on his own turf, wandering around an extra-dimensional world mapped like an Escher sketch of Five Nights at Freddy’s. With a splash of Stephen King about the narrative dangers, the movie enters its strongest (and silliest) phase.

It’s totally derivative… but only if you’re familiar with a pantheon of other horror movies. Imaginary is probably a lot less guilty if you’re 15, sat beside a parent, and this is your first scary movie at the cinema. It is, effectively, Baby’s First Hellraiser.

Forgiven it’s over-familiar turns and overbearing exposition, there’s some good fun to be had here, and one or two nifty little ideas, too. A creepy playroom sequence involving roving light patterns from a night-light triggers an appropriately childlike dread response. See also some disarming eye make-up that litters these same late stages. Imaginary is plenty capable of eliciting jumps from the unsuspecting.

For tried and tested senior horror fans, however, this is all a little simplistic and condescending. Wadlow struggles to find a bridging tone that allows the movie to play engagingly for kids and adults at the same time. Granted, he’s come some way from the truly-dire Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island. Imaginary feels more confident and more cohesive. But torn between sensibilities, it ultimately chooses to play as a gateway Goosebumps picture. Met on that level and with a child’s eye for wonder, it passes muster (just). But as an adult its hard not to come away irked by the sing-song performances, spurious character choices and gun-shy scares.

I’m not sure, either, where the idea came from that we need studio-softened ‘gateway’ horror movies designed and built to be lite versions of better movies. Kids will just find Hellraiser etc. anyway. Those looking for the good stuff have plenty of recourse and have been raised on the technology that’ll provide it for them, rendering excursions like this one a little pointless. Unless you’re an exec. Then Imaginary is business-savvy audience grooming. Like the villains of the piece, Blumhouse are looking to get ’em while they’re young.

Ick.