The review of a new horror movie 'Imaginary' by Blumhouse Productions, which just after the recent and worthy of viewing, Megan and Five Nights At Freddy's, continues with interest and far too much circumspection the search for fear within everyone's reach, falling victim to a PG-13 far too emasculating and thus of a director with little ambition such as Jeff Wadlow
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| Image Credit: Blumhouse |
From time to time it happens that Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse Productions and King Midas of low-budget but high-grossing film and television horror, sees it right by deciding to financially support young newcomers with good ideas, capable of making their way in the panorama increasingly crowded with auteur horror, as well as popular horror. Yet, this is not the case with Jeff Wadlow, who after directing some of the most forgettable titles of recent years, including Autobiography of a Fake Murderer, Truth or Dare, Fantasy Island, and The Curse of Bridge Hollow, three of which inexplicably produced by Blumhouse Productions, reaches the eighth film of his career, writing and directing Imaginary, a weak and more than boring horror film based on the power of dreams and imagination.
Wadlow with an eye on the past, observes the present... remaining blinded by it
At the center of Imaginary is the classic dysfunctional family, with a once again traumatic past behind it, which has left marks on the skin and memory of each character, or almost, and a desire not yet unanimously understood to move forward, looking to the future and all that the latter may bring. The move to a new house - for the protagonist Jessica (DeWanda Wise), however, is one of her origins - soon leads the Imaginary family to the direct and increasingly disturbing and gradual observation of a psychic delirium that has a lot to do with the symbolic power of dreams and more generally of imagination, to the point of delirium.
If the same narrative approach of these films is no longer surprising - Imaginary would like to follow the example of the recent Megan and Five Nights At Freddy's, both truly worthy, despite a multitude of defects -, nor is the investigation into a form of cinema in search of a fear that is within the reach of a wide audience and no longer exclusively adults, as normally happens with modern horror, what is surprising is the lack of bite and thus the laziness that tiredly drives the vicissitudes of the protagonists, from the opening credits to those of tail.
In fact, what Imaginary, like many other recent low - or big-budget horror films, tries to do is to look for a specific cinematic model, typical of some famous authors such as Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist - Demonic Presences), Richard Donner ( The Omen), Robert Wise (Audrey Rose) and William Friedkin (The Exorcist), rereading the element of the evil in childhood through the lens of today, exploiting demonic possession in favor of a reflection on the manipulative capacity of new technologies and thus of the new media, to the detriment of the little ones, despite lacking the authorial maturity of the masters, capable of producing fear even where there doesn't seem to be any at all.
Jeff Wadlow who wrote the film in the company of Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, taking on the role of horror director, is mostly incapable of generating real moments of tension, both in writing and in what was filmed, preferring rather a narrative tone incessantly suspended between dreams and a low-grade television format desperately searching for suspense, which, if is supported by real intentions and/or a very specific authorial gaze, could even give life to film research with forbidden interests, or guilty pleasure. Yet, it doesn't seem to be his intention at all and it's a real shame.
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| Image Credit: Blumhouse |
Imaginary: evaluation and conclusion
On paper, as generally happens in many cases of low-budget horror cinema with a strong high narrative concept, Imaginary could have seemed like an interesting project, yet that little good certainly inherent in the sole and more than abstract initial thought of the Wadlow team is lost right from the opening sequence.
In fact, the latter is nothing more than a riot of very unconvincing ideas with a little bite, which would like to work, as mentioned, without succeeding at all, on the iconography of Imaginary, to create real mythology, like the much more worthy are Megan and Five Nights At Freddy's, capable of capturing, unlike Wadlow's film, the concreteness of fear even in the most minuscule, insignificant and disparate of the elements of their narrative structure, without ever overdoing it, nor aiming for certain seriousness unattainable for fiercely commercial and only in very rare cases authorial horror products.
Wadlow's film would like to naively recall the epic and the delirious that are typical of The Shining and of much of John Carpenter's cinema - above all, The Seed of Madness - having a lot of fun, this must be said, in modeling a kingdom of the dreamlike and of the delusional person who, between closed doors, moving steps, imaginary friends who come to life and even alternative realities to already sadly established destinies - from parental mental illness to mourning, up to the ghosts of abuse never really treated -, reflects on the consequences of 'excess of imagination and again, on the loneliness and traumas of the past never really overcome.
Many of us, starting from the advertising material, would have expected, more than happy to actually find him, a ferocious horror version of Ted, considering the incessant presence on stage of the teddy bear, Teddy, otherwise known as Bing Bong, Jeff Wadlow but he took his film decidedly elsewhere, into that realm of oblivion decidedly reluctant to save more than forgettable feature films like this one, which by sinking again and again, can only soon reach that profound darkness of nothingness in which Imaginary, more than many others recent titles, it really deserves to stay.
