Imaginary Review

“Every culture has a name for it. We call them imaginary friends. Just because you stop believing in them doesn’t mean they’re gone. And they’re angry that you left.” – Gloria

That’s a line that could have come from Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. I think it encapsulated what the producers of that particular movie might have been aiming for, had they a modicum of talent and a gift for storytelling. I mean, after all the basis for that film is that Pooh Bear and his friends were abandoned by Christopher Robin and then gradually went feral in the Hundred Acre Wood, right? But that film turned out to be a sorry piece of trash widely reckoned to be the worst film ever made, and I’d have to agree wholeheartedly. Way before this year’s Razzies, where it scooped up an armful of awards, I had called it at the beginning of the year in my annual Good, Bad & Fugly list, which you can read here.

But it wasn’t Blood and Honey that went through my mind when I saw the poster and trailer, it was Blumhouse’s M3GAN. I kind of assumed at first glance that the mighty Blumhouse were stumbling and repeating themselves with another story about an electronic toy gone wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I quickly learned from the trailer – this is an entirely different concept from the producers of an impressive line-up of films that includes The Invisible Man, The Black Phone, Five Nights at Freddy’s and M3GAN. (That’s a stunning resume right there.)

So, I gathered it was all to do with maybe a possessed Teddy Bear? Okay, that’s interesting. But the screening of the actual film showed there was so much more to it, and every time I think Blumhouse might be peaking, they kick things up a notch higher. (I’ve begun thinking of them as the horror movie equivalent of Pixar, who can just do nothing wrong in my eyes.)

We’re in the realm of imaginary friends. Most of us have had them, I actually didn’t (but I did want the Lost in Space Robot as a friend when I was a child back in the sixties.) I’ve always thought of imaginary friends as kind of eerie, and they’ve been well represented in films like Come Play. Imagination can be very strong, and in a way, doesn’t Freddy Krueger somehow fit into this twisted mould? I think he does, and so must the producers of Imaginary because the address the family move to is on Elm Street, in Springwood.

I can’t really accept that any happy childhood memories have happened on a place called Elm Street – that’s what five decades of watching horror movies have done to me, but Jessica (Dewanda Wise) insists she has had happy times there, despite recurring nightmares about being chased by a giant spider-type monster that seems to be a mutation of her father. She’s now a successful writer of a best-selling series of children’s books about a spider (go figure) and is moving back to her childhood home with her musician husband Max (Tom Payne) and her two stepdaughters fifteen-year-old Taylor (Taegen Burns) and much younger Alice (Pyper Braun). Alice has scars on her arm, due to an incident involving her real mother.

As they move in, Alice, who’s a solitary little girl, does some exploring and finds a closed off section of the cellar. Exploring a little further, she finds a teddy bear in the closed off area, so she adopts him as her imaginary friend and names him Chauncey. At first, the little girl’s games are harmless – but soon they become dangerous. A scavenger hunt which starts off with needing to collect a happy thing becomes sinister, including something that scares you, something that will get you in trouble and something that hurts.

Alice is insistent that it’s Chauncey making her do these things, but of course the adults don’t believe her because Chauncey’s just imaginary – or is he? Gloria (Betty Buckley) a neighbour who used to babysit Jessica as a small child has a different view, and remembers some things that Jessica has supressed since moving away at the age of five. Imaginary friends are most often left behind – and they become angry. And they wait.

I had high expectations for this one, and they were all realised. Oddly, there isn’t any gore in the film, but a sense of sheer menace pervades throughout, from the opening sequence of Jessica’s nightmare through to the final scene, which is a nod in the direction of another of my favourites, Poltergeist. (I’m not telling you what, but you’ll know it when you see it.) There are two highly effective jump scares which put daylight between my ass and my seat.

The standout for me was Pyper Braun as Alice, she has an awesome amount of talent for a child so young, turning in a realistic, natural performance. This is the level of child actor performance that I’d expect from a Spielberg movie.

All things considered; this one gets a higher-than-average rating.

Rob Rating = 9