Imaginary (2024) - A Compliment Sandwich

or at least an attempt at one

Oh boy.

Full spoilers below, you are warned.

Imaginary

Directed by: Jeff Wadlow

Starring: DeWanda Wise, Tom Payne, Taegan Burns, Pyper Braun, Verónica Falcón, Betty Buckley

Run time: 104 minutes

the plot in short

Children’s books writer/illustrator Jessica (DeWanda Wise) and her new husband Max (Tom Payne) prepare to move into Jessica’s childhood home, along with Max’s two daughters, Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun) . Jessica suffers from frequent nightmares which seemingly involve the antagonist from her books, a giant spider creature, so is hoping for a fresh start.

Alice wanders off into the house during a game of hide and seek, and in the basement she discovers a small teddy bear. Alice immediately takes to the bear, christening it Chauncey and while Jessica is initially pleased to see Alice enjoying her new friend’s company, things take an increasingly sinister turn, and soon Jessica is forced to re-examine her own past.

but first

I think it is important for you to know, dear reader, that I came out of this film feeling okay about it. When leaving the cinema, I thought to myself “oh, that was alright”. I did not have to white-knuckle my way through it with rage like I did with Halloween Kills for example (… fucking evil dies tonight). Imaginary was fine.

And then, somewhere between me leaving the cinema and getting on the train home, I started running through the film in my head to parse it.

Imaginary is not, in fact, fine. It is actually quite bad. However, there are some good sequences there, and some great ideas. But from a storytelling point of view, it’s frustrating to say the least to see these great ideas executed in a manner which I can only describe as akin to a Celebrity Masterchef contestant panic-deboning a trout, which is to say very badly indeed.

So, instead of a straight-up review, I present to you the Imaginary (2024) compliment sandwich. Or at least an attempt at one.

Good - the cold open

The movie seemingly opens in media res, with Jessica escaping from a strange netherworld into a calm apartment. There is blood on the walls. A bloody tooth on the side table. Jessica calls out “I’m sorry we did not get to finish our game.”

A voice calls out, raspy, in pain: “it’s okay. it’s okay.”

Suddenly a man, bloodied and bruised, missing a tooth and eyes big voids, appears and says “you will never see your friend again.”

Cut to Jessica startling awake. We find out later in the movie what this dream means, but it’s such a strong start that you’re almost tricked into believing this is what the movie will be like, tense, trippy, mysterious.

Bad - the dialogue

Remember a while back when that interview with Dakota Johnson went viral because the interviewer told her about that one line in the trailer for Madame Web (“he was in the Amazon with my mum when she was researching spiders right before she died”) that also went viral and she was deeply confused as to why? Remember the cadence that line is delivered in? Well, imagine most of the dialogue in this movie being delivered in that cadence and you’re there (in the Amazon, with my mum).

Good - Pyper Braun as Alice

God bless that kid, she is the standout actor in this cast and I hope she gets to try again in a better movie.

Bad - Tom Payne as Max

Max, Jessica’s husband, played by British actor Tom Payne (and I mention he’s British specifically because his accent in this film settles somewhere in New Zealand) is in a band. The first time we hear anything about this is when Max is about to get into a car to leave on tour for an unspecified time. We don’t see any musical instruments lying around the house, no posters on the wall, no hint as to what Max does. What we do see, with zero context, is Jessica wearing a t-shirt with the words “Burning Cats” on it in the film’s opening, and from that we’re supposed to have figured out that 1) it’s a band name, and 2) it’s specifically Max’s band’s name.

Anyway, Max gets into the car and drives off and is not seen for the rest of the movie (apart from a moment we’ll get into in a bit). Given that he was barely doing anything up until this point (apart from deliver exposition in the exact tone everyone else is delivering exposition in) what was point, pls?

Good - Betty Buckley briefly goes completely insane

Not seconds after Max drives off to tour with his band of unspecified success, Gloria (Betty Buckley, veteran actress of stage and screen) materializes in the front garden, unnerving Jessica by telling her she used to babysit her when she lived there. Jessica doesn’t remember, but is friendly nonetheless.

Later, Alice disappears and when Taylor goes looking for her, Gloria invites her in to her house where she basically dumps a van of exposition on the driveway of this movie by revealing that she was fully aware of Jessica’s childhood imaginary friend, that the last night she babysat her was the night Jessica’s imaginary friend tried to pull her into its world, and that Gloria has been fascinated by imaginary friends ever since to the point where she’s spent years writing researching a book about them.

Taylor takes Gloria back to the house to speak to Jessica and the three gear up to go into the netherworld after Alice. Once in the netherworld, Betty Buckley accidentally hits upon a level of hyper-concentrated camp which is easily the highlight of the movie as Gloria closes the portal to the real world, reveals that she’s been obsessed with finding this netherworld ever since that night and that she’s been mocked for her research BUT NOT ANYMORE!!!!!!

She is then abruptly pulled into one of the netherworld’s rooms and mauled to death. Brief, but hilarious.

Bad - the myriad of story threads that go absolutely nowhere

One of the biggest issues Imaginary has is that it has so many potentially interesting threads which it either drops or just doesn’t bother with at all.

How far away are they moving at the start of the film? IDK. Taylor looks a bit forlornly at her social media as she settles into her new room; has she had to leave people behind? Is that why she’s determined to be performatively bitchy to Jessica even when the stakes amp up and it would suit her to not be? Doesn’t matter. Jessica appears to have writer’s block? So fucking what? What’s the situation with the girls’ mum, who is implied to be on a psych ward? *shrug*. Do we get any more scenes with Gloria, in order for us to care about the character? Nah, it’s just the bits I described in the previous section. Has there been any attempt from Jessica to properly form a bond with her stepchildren? How long have she and Max been together? Does. Not. Get. Mentioned. A boy from down the street briefly causes havoc at the house, not really important (this one is particularly daft because Liam, the boy in question, is invited to the house by Taylor and produces a baggy of “drugs”, before he has an encounter with Chauncey in one of the only good scares of the whole movie, and it is NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN apart from an unintentionally hilarious moment where Taylor sees him looking at her out the window and he solemnly closes the blinds like this means anything).

Basically, it feels like “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The Movie”.

Good - the trippy other world

Yes, the Never Ever (… yeah, why not) is derivative of several other netherworlds (Twin Peaks comes to mind) but it does look very cool. It’s such a shame they don’t go fully trippy because if the latter half of the movie had just gone full acid trip it would have been so much more fun.

Bad - the explanation

Basically, Chauncey the physical teddy bear is not real, and only Jessica and Alice can see him. He’s not secretly sentient or something like that, he’s in fact the thing that is imaginary. The movie presents this explanation to us as if it’s some sort of OH MY GAWD moment, and not massively hinted at in pretty much all of the plot descriptions that were out before the movie came out. Not only that, Jessica takes absolute ages to remember that Chauncey was her childhood imaginary friend as well, despite being given a pretty big hint by her dad (she visits him in the care home he’s in and he starts freaking out about “CB” which she interprets, I SHIT YOU NOT, as referring to a radio she used to play with and not CHAUNCEY BEAR).

There are a couple of ways this could have been done that isn’t the above mess. Jessica could have had more scenes with Gloria. She could have properly delved into that doubt which sets in about how happy her childhood was. Chauncey could have actually been sentient (imagine the camp oh my god) or at least physically real and able to be seen by all characters. They then could have worked with Alice’s trauma, maybe have her claim he’s real and talking to her, only for the adults not to believe her. They could have had her psychiatrist (Verónica Falcón, who is absolutely wasted on this movie, ONE FUCKING SCENE is what she gets) involved more. They could have done anything that isn’t what actually happens but no, we get CB radio.

Very bad - Chauncey the physical teddy bear is not scary

Look at him up there! He’s fucking adorable! No amount of him suddenly moving his head is going to convince me that thing is evil! It's not Brahms from The Boy, it’s a little teddy bear pal!

Just awful, no really holy shit why - the fake-out denouement

Jessica’s saved! Taylor and Alice pull her out of the Never Ever, all is well, and we next see Jessica by her dad’s bedside reading from her newest book, as Taylor, Alice and Max lovingly watch on. But before you’ve even had a chance to contemplate whether this means Max was told about everything that happened, the film pulls the rug out from under you because Jessica is still in the Never Ever! And now everyone suddenly has Chauncey’s beady little eyes and Jessica still needs to escape and it’s all just exhausting to the point where, when Taylor does actually drag Jessica out of the Never Ever and they escape outside as the house burns down (Jessica says “let it burn” and hello again Halloween Kills flashbacks) you’re just exhausted.

Excuse me while I go for a lie down.