Imaginary

Okay. Bear with me here.

If you love "horror" movies where a child all by her lonesome descends stairs into a dark and dirty cellar where creepy noises emanate from, why, oh who cares if no kid would ever do this in like, ever.

If you get creeped out by a Swifty taking a selfie and in the background of that photo, yikes! Lookout! There's some old lady neighbor photobombing, and she's got to be at least in her sixties!

Terrifying!

The acting and writing are tiresome and totally unbelievable. Not only do they not seem like a family, they don't even seem like they know each other at all.

And lastly, if sitting in on child psychology sessions is your bag, get ready to fill that bag full with this film.

This movie should be Teddy Ruxspin spinning out of control.

That's what we're all here for.

But it's not. And never is.

The entire movies plods along at a 3 until the end.

The end is just okay.

Influences of the art of M. C. Escher and much better 1990's horror flicks.

And Betty Buckley. She's always great. But here there's no eight, and she's just not enough.

Not to save this.

That makes this movie a tad more bearable at 4 stars.

Family moves to creepy house; a young child has paranormal experiences; a moody teen does moody teen things; not all the adults are what they seem; a character finds repressed memories are dragged up; yada, yada, yada.

It's not quite bad, but it certainly isn't good. There's a bit of Poltergeist, a bit of Nightmare on Elm Street, a bit of Labyrinth - and it's unclear whether this is meant as an homage-melange, or a pilfering of tropes from a variety of better films.

The film relies heavily on jump-scares, but there's little sense of terror. The twists can be seen coming a mile away. The ending is frankly lazy.

The cast do their best. Young Pyper Braun is good as the girl at the centre of things, DeWanda Wise OK as the step-mother trying to penetrate the mystery. The rest are either under-used or let down by a thin script and unimaginative direction (or both).

The special effects budget was clearly painfully small, and no-one was able to anything convincing or scary with it.

Not a film that will live long in the memory.

Really terrible on all fronts from the acting, shoddy editing, weird production design and bad writing. I used to have so much respect for Dewanda Wise but this movie made her look really bad. Felt like she just showed up and learned her lines that morning, random emotional scenes that felt out of place and acting on par with melodramatic lifetime movies. There was zero chemistry between all the actors. Worst casting was the father who kept falling in and out of his accent from American to Australian. I did not buy him as a father at all, and the age difference did not feel authentic. Dewanda just felt like she was showing up for her check, she needs to fire her agent. The cinematography felt too much like a TV movie with special effects that looked like a 90's Disney film like "Don't Look Under the Bed." I got whiplash from the dark scenes transitioning straight to bright sunlight. The film was laughably bad, I'm shocked it made it into theaters. There was not a single good performance in this film. Teenagers in the theatre kept chatting and playing on their phones and laughing, which tells me even more that nobody was invested in this mediocre film.

I didn't buy for a second that any of the characters ever cared about one another. Teenage daughter was a clichè stereotype I've seen so many times, nothing fresh or intriguing. I did not buy for a second Dewanda cared about those kids and there was zero chemistry akin to actors talking to a pillow because nothing genuine bounced between them. Just flat and forced emotion that was never earned.

3 out of 5 stars.

Imaginary is a fair supernatural horror film with a concept about children's imaginary friends becoming some evil entity in a spirit world. Its a bit of poltergeist like film. The film has some cheesy dialogue and it lacks the scares and horror. Which it could have added jump scares and be a little intense to make this film worthy.

The plot follows Jessica (DeWanda Wise) as she and her new family with her step children move into her old childhood home. After a tragedy happened with her and her father at the house that left her dad speechless and traumatized. Her step daughter Alice comes across a teddy bear which she makes out to be an imaginary friend which becomes very sinister.

The cast ensemble was okay. The story was decent. The script was a bit cheesy with the dialogue. And the direction with Jeff Wadlow has been lacking with providing any scares or intensity. Yes the characters come across something evil and the way it was filmed. It failed to even put you on the edge of your seat. Interesting concept but failed to execute the scares.

Overall, it was an okay film that failed to deliver on scares and thrills.

I usually like this genre of horror that requires suspension of disbelief in a massive way to believe something inanimate can be sinister. Here though it was far off with the camera work and coincidental soundtrack doing nothing to make the dumb teddy possess any quality of fear. This was made worse as other times the camera work was excellent in composition as well as lighting and sound bearing hallmarks of quality movie making. The high drama aspect required to create chills didn't hit at all and dialogue in places seemed to be very low effort. The handful of shivers that didn't require acting did hit but in hindsight had nowhere near the impact they could have had. Towards the end the horror did take a twist reminiscent of nightmare of elm street's dream sequence end in suspense and thrills.

I'd be surprised if there was a sequel or a series of movies in the future in the same way as the conjuring.