Blumhouse’s Imaginary

Made a page for the new Blumhouse horror movie. Jeff Wadlow directs and DeWanda Wise stars.

Trailers:

Jeff Wadlow is one of the worst to still be doing it. Kick-Ass 2, Truth or Dare, Fantasy Island... The only thing I've ever seen from him that's even okay is The Curse of Bridge Hollow. That sort of makes it hilarious that it's his only film to bypass a theatrical run.

He must be a very nice guy, very good at staying on schedule and budget, or both.

As for this, it looks generic as they come. The ads remind me not just of Poltergeist or Insidious but many other spooky supernatural films to come in the wake of those. A horror movie about tulpas is seldom-done and right there, and we're, what? Making this about spirits from beyond for the umpteenth time? Redoing the best scare from Mario Bava's Shock for the fifth time in about as many years?

That being said, it doesn't exactly look terrible. Pretty sure it'll have to be better than Wadlow's other Blumhouse horrors. Still...

The most promninently-featured imaginary friend in the trailers for Ryan Reynolds' new movie is creepier than the giant monster teddy bear here(shades of Charles Band?).

Which takes me back to when there was a slasher Jack Frost released in close proximity to the Michael Keaton-led family comedy Jack Frost, and the snowman in the latter was so much more horrifying than the one in the former.

Edited by Prowler on Feb 6th 2024 at 1:12:37 PM

...you didn't like Kick-Ass 2?

Maybe we should keep the focus on this movie, and not Kick-Ass 2 or just bashing the entire career of one of the people involved.

Eh, I think it looks decent? "He's not imaginary and he's not your friend" is a 10/10 tagline.

I will say the retro "commercial" is pretty creepy.

This wasn't so bad. That doesn't make it great, or very good, but I like some of the ideas in here: the twist regarding Chauncey the bear's actual physical existence is pretty good, and the third act is somehow both derivative and inspired at the same time(love the production design, it's just not very original). The creature EFX are mostly very good. Some of the "boo" moments work. Performances are fine across the board.

I think where it really suffers is that it feels overly complicated in its storytelling, to no real end(some noticeable dead end plot threads). It also seemingly has the need to overexplain everything, at the cost of both scares and pacing—Betty Buckley is practically Basil Exposition, and if I believe that if a movie could get away with fudging logic, it's this one.

I'm also not sure if it's intentionally funny or not(leaning towards "yes"), but I think that if so, it could have leaned on comedy harder. It's a ludicrous premise. Have a little more fun with it.

Edited by Prowler on Mar 9th 2024 at 11:21:59 AM