Imaginary
LIONSGATE
Imagine a world where audiences receive a consistent output of quality horror from massive movie studios. A world where quality takes a big step over quantity and audiences are treated to something that is not Imaginary. This world is so close to existing with some excellent horror created for audiences from all different walks of life, the likes of Evil Dead Rise and Godzilla: Minus One immediately spring to the forefront as some recent examples of what that potential looks like. But, unfortunately, studios would prefer to pump out, with no better way of expressing in another term: garbage. Films such as Night Swim, and Exorcist: Believer, two of the worst wide releases of this decade, were low budget studio approved drivel, and joining the fray is Imaginary.
Imaginary begins with the introduction of a woman moving into the home of her recently divorced husband, this is as strangely handled as it sounds and follows her desire to bond with the children of this man who disappears for two-thirds of the runtime on his own errands, ignorant to the events that will unfold. Now, audiences shouldn’t worry as there are several cliche-ridden circumstances that they will have to dredge their way through for the next 100 minutes of their lives. The story unfolds with twists and turns that, while surprising in some ways, are ultimately just convoluted excuses to make this film even a smidge memorable, albeit more confusing on afterthought. Every performance is constantly at war with the writers as they try to turn in half-decent line readings, but that is almost impossible when the viewer is always saddled with exposition dumps, and a never-ending brigade of trauma lore hurled at the audience from behind the cover of Low-Budget Horror. Since nothing happens for the majority of Imaginary’s overly inflated runtime, the audience is forced to spend time with grating characters, stale dialogue, and a convoluted mythos that is spat at them by the old mysterious woman that all of these films akin to Insidious have, even with sequel baiting off-camera characters to set up crossover or even more frighting: a franchise. The hope of a semi-interesting third act is squandered by the leads straying away into The Further from the Insidious franchise, just only if the Insidious films had no sense of tension, set design, or cohesion with a labyrinth promised visual climax yet given a derivative and basic use of set and production design to once again illustrate the lack of visual substance this film has.
The performances here do absolutely everything they can with little to no help from the scripting department in any way. The worst aspect of this is that there really are no standout performances here as it just feels like a group of individuals trying to cash a paycheck and be done with this whole ordeal in order to not carry the burden or baggage past the first or second take. Witnessing the final product brings this full circle and makes this even more apparent to anyone, unfortunately, caught watching this waste of resources.
Imaginary will undoubtedly be one of the worst films of 2024 when all is said and done, with only the small victory of being better than the likes of Madame Web and Night Swim. The biggest positive to come from the creation of this deafeningly bad film is that it ultimately does point towards a healthy filmgoing market. The idea that this can coexist alongside films like Dune: Part II and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is something all film lovers can appreciate in the end. So, if studios need to continue to pump out cheap trash with minuscule budgets and high profit margins to make films like the astonishingly excellent, The First Omen then so be it. Audiences just need to start showing up to more than just the cheap trash. with Imaginary not worth thinking about, so it sure as hell is not worth watching.