Jessica is still traumatised by a person turning into a spider and chasing her round the house, night terrors don’t come much worse I guess. Anyways she is married to musician Max, and is trying to be a stepmother to Max’s two daughters pre-teen Alice and fifteen-year-old Taylor. Jessica gets on with Alice but Taylor is your typical teen chick, read complete bitch. On the bright side Jessica is also an award winning children’s book illustrator. Following a particular harrowing nightmare Max decides they should move back to Jessica’s childhood home, which is apparently her safe space. The family duly move in and Jessica continues her campaign to be the best mom in the world. While playing a game of hide and seek, Jessica is having a problem with her latest book cover, she steps outside to take a work call. Alice continues the game, goes down to the basement following a voice and discovers a teddy, which is locked away. Naturally Alice bonds with the fur bundle and that’s when things start going awry. Seems Alice has a new invisible friend, and that friend doesn’t have Alice’s best interest in mind.

The concept of the malevolent invisible childhood friend has been used previously in horror, but for the life of me I can’t name a single movie I remember the device featuring in. Which I guess is an indication that it doesn’t overly work as well as some movie makers think it will. But hey pull the buggy up to the curb, you might just be saying, child in peril at least. Well hold onto your linen we’re talking Blumhouse here and a PG13 rating, nothing much is going to happen to kids when you have that dual strike against a horror flick. So yeah, pretty safe flick, using existing tropes that aren’t exactly setting the horror world on fire. Maybe Jason Blumhouse should be making Disney Princess flicks, just a thought.

[Editor’s note: So I did a bit of research on imaginary friends in horror cinema and came up with May (2002), Poltergeist (1982), Hide and Seek (2005), The Amityville Horror (1978) and Daniel Isn’t Real (2019). Dude your cognative decline on full show, just like Trump shitting himself after scarfing a dozen Big Macs it isn't pretty].

The family dynamic is at least working in this movie, but you know past trauma is going down, which is perhaps the only thing that is. Jessica is trying her best, Max is loving but descends into being a plot device in reality, Alice is typically accepting everything, and Taylor is the teen chick who has a problem with her new reality. I was kind of happy with this aspect, but was pretty much disappointed with how it was used. There is never a feeling that the writers understand drama here, paint by numbers comes to mind.

On the bright side we are not overwhelmed by things happening late at night in bad lighting, in fact a lot of this movie takes place in broad daylight. Brave strategy, which I guess might work for the pre-teens, not enough happening to have this little black duck clutching his pillow. Horror tactics are not the strong point of Imaginary, pretty run of the mill and to be honest I don’t even think your ten-year-old niece is going to be overly concerned by this flick. The scare tactics aren’t all that, and I reckon they should have gone for a psychology angle ala The Babadook with this one, would have been a hell of a lot more effective than the middle of the road drudgery we are present with. So don’t go into this one if expecting chills, you would have better luck checking out your fridge.

Where this movie really goes off the rails is with the regurgitation of previous better horror flicks. Never remind the audience of something superior they may have previous seen, it isn’t going to reflect well on your movie. Anyways if you have sat through any of the Insidious movies then there is absolutely nothing new to be seen here. Equally we get some, I’m going to be kind here, references to previous movies, Poltergeist comes to mind citizen; go see that movie if you want something decent to watch. So yeah nothing new to be seen and a pale imitation of previous efforts.

The acting is passable, if by passable you mean up to the level needed by the movie without an entirely awesome effort being put in by anyone. DeWanda Wise (Jessica) is putting in the yards without really owning her role, if you think of daytime soaps then you are pretty much up to play with her input her. Taegen Burns (Taylor) manages not to look at the camera, but to be honest she isn’t given much to do as any attempt at developing her character is forgotten about by the next scene. Holding opinion till I see her in something else. Pyper Braun (Alice) is another one of those kid actors who are going to be a complete pain in the arse later in her life, someone needs to tell her she comes across as irritating and can’t act, seriously that needs to happen before the future of humanity is put at further risk. I’m not even going near the rest of our cast, no one is improving their reputation.

The plot for this one is all over the place, ideas are developed then dropped, character background traits are forgotten about, and to be honest purely paint by numbers hack attempt judging by what I saw on my screen. Seriously we have an expert in the neighbourhood, well thank god for that, otherwise we might be confused about how to resolve the problems! Actually her input is background rambling and does nothing to help defeat the big bad.

Blumhouse needs to stop making horror movies, they really are not promoting the genre, and to be honest are only a slight step up from The Asylum. Imaginary is a by the numbers, play it safe, horror flick aimed at a younger audience who have all moved on by now. Open statement to Jason Blum, dude seriously even young kids are bored by this sort of thing by now. No recommendation on the movie, another flick thrown on our screens to make a few dollars, kind of hope it didn’t achieve that to be honest. For a movie titled Imaginary there is very little imagination involved, just another plodding PG13th effort that no one really asked for.