IMAGINARY (2024) * ½

Blumhouse had a hit last year with a movie about a killer toy.  Of course, you all know the flick I’m talking about, the instant classic M3GAN.  Now, here they come again with another horror film about a killer toy.  Sadly, lightning didn’t strike twice with the tepid and forgettable Imaginary. 

You know, I thought it was going to be good for a while there, but it turned out that it was just my imagination. 

Jessica (DeWanda Wise) moves back into her childhood home with her blended family in tow.  Before long, her young stepdaughter Alice (Pyper Braun) finds an old teddy bear and names him Chauncey.  Naturally, we learn Chauncey is evil (or I should say, the characters learn as the audience knows what’s up from the start), and when he whisks her away to Imaginationland, it’s up to Jessica to rescue her. 

Imaginary is a limp hodgepodge of M3GAN, Child’s Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5, Beetlejuice, Insidious, and a Snuggles TV commercial.  Director Jeff (Kick-Ass 2) Wadlow seems to be more interested in ripping off other movies than fleshing out an original mythology of his own.  He does deliver one fun scene where Chauncey attacks a druggie neighbor, but it was already more or less shown in its entirety in the trailers.  The scenes in the MC Esher-inspired “Neverever” are especially derivative and drag like a sumbitch.  The gratuitous fake-out ending also adds unnecessarily to the already bloated running time.

The acting is crummy across the board.  Betty (Carrie) Buckley is particularly annoying as the nosy neighbor who spews an ungodly amount of exposition.  In fact, Chauncey himself is probably the best actor in the whole movie.  Even though he is mostly silent in his close-ups, his expressions speak volumes.  Too bad his final form looks like leftovers from Five Nights at Freddy’s.  Whenever Chauncey’s original form isn’t on screen, Imaginary is nearly unbearable.