458: Imaginary

[00:00:00] 165, let's get to the new film Imaginary, directed by Jeff Wadlow, stars Dawanda Wise, Tegan Burns, Piper Braun, Betty Buckley, few others, and the synopsis is a woman returns to her childhood home to discover that the imaginary friend she left behind is very real

[00:00:24] and unhappy that she abandoned him. So this director also did Truth or Dare, Fantasy Island, so mostly a Blumhouse horror director, and when I heard about this one, didn't know much about it at all except that it was a

[00:00:43] possessed teddy bear of sorts but didn't get around to seeing it until just recently on demand, heard really bad things about it so didn't really go in with high hopes and I definitely don't have an issue with mediocre average Blumhouse-esque films, like I'm kind

[00:01:00] of a sucker for these movies and even if they're supposed to be horrible I usually give them a chance. However, with all that being said, this is easily one of the worst films of the year for me and one of the worst horror films especially.

[00:01:18] The first 30-40 minutes I was actually sort of engaged, it was pretty generic but I was like this isn't that bad. But for one thing, this movie, it should have been 80 minutes at most. Like the third act, I thought it went on and on and on.

[00:01:37] I appreciated it at the beginning for trying to do more with the concept of this possessed teddy bear but the more that it tried to explain the backstory of this ghost demon and the history with the main character and this older woman, it just got goofier and goofier.

[00:02:02] The more it explained itself, the stupider it felt instead of being more, here we know that this is a stupid concept, just go with it. We need to explain everything. And I appreciate them trying but to me they crashed and burned with it.

[00:02:19] And not only did it just not work from a storytelling perspective but I cannot tell you what happened in that last 30 minutes in terms of the connections and the logic of everything.

[00:02:31] Not that it needs to make sense realistically but I cannot tell you what tied to what, why they were there, why the teddy bear was angry and then okay and then blah blah blah. I just was completely lost.

[00:02:45] So it really wore out its welcome long before it ended and I could not wait for it to be over. Which I hate to be so mean but I was actually like hey maybe I'll be a defender of this

[00:02:59] movie that's typically how it goes with me but couldn't really do that unfortunately. Otherwise the performances are fine, I think the main actress is pretty decent. The young girl was alright. Oh and also one quick thing, I'm really, I don't mind a horror film like this being fairly

[00:03:21] uninspired, like I don't really care if it just takes a familiar concept and just goes with it, like that's fine. But I'm getting so tired of this trend with horror films of all kinds where it's, I guess

[00:03:35] you could say it's inspired by things like Chucky and other things where someone goes back to a childhood home or they move into a new house and then there's something wrong with the house, there's a possessed object or a certain room that's haunted and things

[00:03:51] go wrong and it just, I'm getting really bored of that. There's only so much you can do with it and this movie really shows its hand right from the get go and it's like alright here, this is my childhood home and this happened when

[00:04:05] I was a kid and it just doesn't work. I guess the only other thing I'll mention that it didn't really help the movie but I thought it was at least somewhat different was that alternative underworld secret space that they go to.

[00:04:20] I thought that was an attempt to do something different but was much too extended and jumbled to really be that memorable or impactful. Really would not recommend it, thought it was truly awful, not one I will ever feel the need to go back to in any way.

[00:04:40] Definitely one of Blumhouse's worst as of late. Oh and sorry, before I wrap up. If you're going to make a movie called Imaginary, you need to make sure that this movie has imagination to it. And this one does not at all.

[00:04:57] You should not name something if you know it's not going to have that much of a weight to it. For example, the one I always think about is Jack Reacher Never Go Back, the sequel

[00:05:07] to the Jack Reacher film where it was terrible and then the constant tagline for reviews was please never go back, yep let's never go back. That was a correct title for this movie.

[00:05:21] You need to either change the title or elevate your work so you're not making it too easy for critics to trash it because with the title Imaginary they definitely walked right into it with the end product. Yeah, that is a light one and a half out of five.