'Imaginary' review: possession horror that's unbearably boring

Your mental to-do list should be a packed schedule of action items by the time “Imaginary,” a cheap-looking exercise in children's horror, concludes. After all, you will need something to focus on, with so little in this PG-13 programmer to draw attention to, especially the floppy, crooked-eyed teddy bear named Chauncey who's oversold as the movies' devilish toy du jour.

When children invent friends to play with, they are showing how fertile they are in their leisure hours and how resilient and efficient their brains can be. In fact, I bet if you tasked any kid with rewriting this script (credited to director Jeff Wadlow, Greg Erb, and Jason Oremland), they'd probably come up with something much more colorful, fun, and weird than Zipless. cafeteria food served on our laps.

“Imaginary” arrives in the shadow of the new date night classic “M3GAN” (also from Blumhouse), a benchmark in the weaponization of a troubled child's playtime, revealing in its cleverness a surprisingly rich commitment with the loves and fears of the technological age. . “Imaginary” is marked by a similar starter kit of broken home emotions: Sincere stepmother and storybook illustrator Jessica (DeWanda Wise) believes the way to deepen her relationships with the somber daughters of her new husband (a puny Tom Payne) ) is to move. all to her old childhood home.

Teenager Taylor (Taegen Burns) becomes depressed and sassy, ​​but nervous Alice (Pyper Braun) finds joy in a red-clad, unstuffed bear discovered (where else?) behind a hidden door in a creepy basement. . Chauncey soon exerts notable and eventually threatening control over Alice, who voices what she tells her, unleashing Jessica's own repressed trauma.

But while “M3GAN” felt alive to the cult potential of a malevolent toy, “Imaginary” skips the directive to entertain and is as stiff, vulgar and dreary as a March space filler can get. When Betty Buckley's erudite grandmother shows up to give us a crash course in the cultural history of children with spiritual best friends, an already weak film suddenly exhibits the tedium of a book report. (Since when do horror writers feel the need to start explaining everything? Oh, “The Innocents,” take me).

Wadlow is, frankly, terrible with actors. Wise, his protagonist, has plenty of presence, but he never really seems to be dealing with nightmares, tormented stepchildren, a creative block, a father in an assisted living facility, and the aftermath of a truly horrendous family incident. The awkwardness is applied evenly: every time two people in the same scene are supposed to know each other, they look like they just met. Wadlow can even make a motionless stuffed animal look misdirected.

Chauncey is the least of their problems, though, when what's been structured around those moments feels like a paint-by-numbers exercise rather than a true dip into terrifying waters. When the final act shifts to a world behind a portal (remember, there's a girl named Alice here), you feel “imaginary,” giving up any interest in jolting our senses, hoping a late injection of CGI twists will work. If kids can stop being their imaginary friends, they can also horrify audiences with cynical naps like this.