Imaginary (2024) Review

 "He's not imaginary.  And he's not your friend."
-Alice



Jessica (DeWanda Wise) moves back into her childhood home along with her husband and two stepdaughters.  The younger stepdaughter, Alice (Pyper Braun), soon makes an imaginary friend, Chauncey.  However, Chauncey has a dark connection to Jessica's childhood.

Spoilers Below.  I can't talk about this movie without getting into the 3rd act, so spoilers below.  This movie is mostly bad and boring, so I would not recommend watching Imaginary.


What Works:

The three main leads of this movie are Jessica and her two stepdaughters.  I think all three actresses; DeWanda Wise, Pyper Braun, and Taegen Burns, do a good job with the material they are given to work with.  They're trying their best and mostly succeed.

The 3rd act of the movie takes place in the imaginary world and I like the production design of the scenes that take place here.  They could have gone further, but the look of the sequences here is cool and they were able to get fairly creative with it considering the budget of the movie.

Finally, there is a nice twist near the end of the movie.  We get through what feels like the climax of the film and our heroes seem to escape.  We get a nice happy ending and everything is resolved, but then the twist hits.  Jessica is still trapped in the imaginary world and none of the ending was real.  This allows the real climax of the movie to begin.  I was genuinely caught off guard by the twist and I think it worked well.


What Sucks:

My main problem with this movie is that it doesn't go far enough with anything interesting.  Like I mentioned above, the production design of the imaginary world was good, but they don't do enough with the premise.  One of the characters says that anything they can imagine can exist in this world, but they don't explore that much.  The filmmakers could have gotten really fun and creative with this, but the end result is lackluster and not overly interesting.

We also don't fully explore everything that happened to Jessica when she was a kid.  Her parents were profoundly affected by what happened and it's mostly glazed over.  More could have been done there.

A large chunk of the movie is mostly uninteresting.  Chauncey doesn't terrorize too many people until the end of the movie and it feels like the movie missed out on some fun opportunities.

Finally, Betty Buckley plays the eccentric, old lady who lives down the street and knows about Jessica's backstory with Chauncey.  I'm not sure what was going on with her performance.  It was all over the place and sometimes it felt like the editor used outtakes.  Her performance just doesn't work.  


Verdict:

Imaginary has some nice production design, decent acting by the leads, and a well-executed twist, but the movie feels like a missed opportunity and suffers from a lack of imagination.  There are interesting elements that aren't fully explored, it takes way too long for the movie to get interesting, and Betty Buckley's performance is bizarre and doesn't work.  Don't waste your time or money with this one.

 3/10: Really Bad 

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