REVIEW: Imaginary loses the plot amid the cheap shocks

Trying to escape her nightmares and with her new family in tow, Jessica (DeWanda Wise) moves back into her childhood home, a place of half-light, shadows and half-forgotten horrors. It was never going to be a good idea. And so it proves in a horror film which starts so promisingly but descends into fairly random nonsense half-way through before redeeming itself with an ending which leaves you thinking “Hmmm… maybe it had something.”

Jessica is the author of a series of massively-successful but seriously-weird picture books full of strange creatures – all the indication we need that Jessica has got, to say the least, issues. And these are complicated by the fact that her return to the home she left as a child in traumatic circumstances is this time accompanied by her soon-to-be-absent husband and his two young daughters.

The older of the two, Taylor (Taegen Burns) is full of simmering resentment, seeing Jessica as a family-breaker and quick to turn her spite on her. However, her younger stepdaughter Alice (Pyper Braun) is initially much kinder to her – until she chances upon a tatty old teddy bear hidden somewhere he clearly wasn’t ever expected to be found again.

And that’s when the teddy bear, whom she quickly calls Chauncey, starts to take over her tender mind as Chauncey develops as her increasingly sinister imaginary friend. The bear starts off by giving her a to-do list full of the sorts of things a young girl really ought to be doing – but turn the list over, and the tasks start taking a very nasty turn. Alice spends her time deep in conversation with Chauncey, which is sweet enough at first, but once he starts to provide his own half of the chat and to dominate hers, it’s time for Jessica to intervene.

Which is when it becomes clear that everything that is happening now has its roots in Jessica’s own traumatic childhood. Lurking in the background, just up the road, is a little old lady clearly with all the clues as to what is actually going on.

So far it’s all pretty intriguing – and the malevolence which Chauncy emanates is very cleverly done. But then it all goes seriously random. In essence the whole thing is exploring the extremes of our imagination and the huge power of our imagination, and of course, part of that power is randomness, but for the film, it’s a bit of a blow as all cohesion falls apart taking all sense with it. As a depiction of a mind out of control, it works, but given absolutely anything could happen at any moment, oddly the tension dissipates.

It's a particularly strong performance from Taegen Burns, and DeWanda Wise is persuasive as someone just about clinging on as they navigate an under-floor/subliminal hell. But there are times when you hope that the young actor Pyper Braun was properly protected from the story that was being told. Certainly she was. Of course she was. But whatever her level of understanding, it’s a pretty unpleasant hour and 40 minutes to have been wrapped up in.