Imaginary (2024)

Considering how weak many of his movies are, I have seen quite a few of the movies directed by Jeff Wadlow. I would recommend some of them, others I would encourage you to avoid, but he certainly seems to be doing a good enough job to be allowed to keep helming some slick, and often fairly bloodless, mainstream horror movies. He also co-wrote this screenplay with Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, which allows me to feel no guilt as I put most of the blame on him for just how weak and dull this is.

DeWanda Wise is Jessica, stepmother to a moody teen (Taylor, played by Taegen Burns) and a younger little girl (Alice, played by Pyper Braun). Her partner, the father of the girls, is a man named Max (Tom Payne), but the movie gets him out of the way very quickly, ensuring that he has no actual character development while the focus stays on Jessica and the girls. Alice starts to spend more and more time in the company of an imaginary friend, Chauncey, and her behaviour becomes more troubling. It also quickly becomes obvious, to Jessica anyway, that Chauncey may not be as imaginary as most imaginary friends.

While they have been in the industry for some time, nothing in the filmographies of Wadlow, Erb, or Oremland made me optimistic about Imaginary, and I was right to approach it with caution. I am not saying this to be pithy or clever, but the biggest thing working against it is a lack of real imagination. The first half of the movie feels like every other horror movie we have seen featuring a woman trying to develop some kind of bond with step-children who are starting to pull further away from her. There is a sinister undercurrent to the childish playtime of young Alice, and a number of conversations start to hint at the fact that Jessica may be forgetting a time in her life when she was acting very much like Alice. All very predictable and obvious stuff, and the big finale delivers nothing to make the slog worthwhile, hampered by a lack of scale and an inability to dive fully into the darkness.

Wise is decent enough as the central adult, doing everything that is asked of her as things get slightly more ridiculous with every minute of the runtime, Burns is a very standard moody teen, and Braun is almost a typical little girl, although she suffers at the hands of writers that make her a bit too unpleasant every now and again. Betty Buckley is a neighbour who helps to reveal details from the past, Samuel Salary is the hospitalized father of our lead, and one or two others appear to either receive a fright or look bemused by the developing situation.

I am sure that this will still do enough to satisfy mainstream cinema patrons who want some chills and thrills during their visit, but I don’t see it having any appeal for anyone who has already started to take a deeper dive into the delights and terrors offered up by the horror genre. Visually lacklustre, written with barely enough energy to transition effectively from one scene to the next, and lacking the ability to even make the most of the jump scares, this is a complete waste of time, especially when there have been one or two horror movies from the past decade that feature more terrifying imaginary friends causing terror and havoc.

Not the worst horror film I have seen this year, but it certainly puts itself forward as a strong contender.

3/10

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Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

I had heard a variety of opinions on Jurassic World Dominion before I finally got around to seeing it, which meant I was perhaps better prepared for it than I otherwise might have been. I heard that Chris Pratt tries to defuse every dinosaur encounter by doing that hand gesture he does (true). I heard that some of the connective tissue to the first film was very tenuous (also true). I heard that there was a disappointing lack of actual dinosaurs, with them being pushed aside in favour of a plot about dangerous bugs (tosh and piffle).

Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) live in a cabin in the woods, being parental figures to Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). They try to stress to Isabella how important it is that she stays hidden away, due to the value of her DNA, but that doesn’t work. In a double-whammy of villainy, both Maisie and a new baby raptor (Blue’s baby, no less) are kidnapped and taken away to the main villain of the piece. I won’t name them, but it is obvious from the very start. Meanwhile, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is investigating the source of some dangerous new species of locust, which leads to her dragging Alan Grant (Sam Neill) along to the HQ of a company called Biosyn, headed up by Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott). Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) works at Biosyn, but he would like someone to get proof of what he suspects are misdeeds. 

With director Colin Trevorrow returning to direct this instalment of the franchise, continuing the story he worked out with Derek Connolly, shaped into a finalised screenplay by himself and Emily Carmichael, this feels like exactly what it is, a film that is part standard blockbuster spectacle and part celebration of an enduring modern franchise. I wasn’t too impressed by the first Jurassic World movie, and I initially felt the same about Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (a film I have subsequently viewed in a more favourable light), but maybe I have been too harsh, perhaps because I have always been hoping to experience the thrill of that Spielberg original all over again.

This is a really solid slice of dino-filled action. It may have a lengthy runtime, but it doesn’t feel overlong. Set-pieces and exciting moments are sprinkled throughout, with the sequence set in Malts being one of the most entertaining blockbuster moments I have seen in some time, the locust sub-plot adds some more tension (and, more importantly, provides a good reason for everyone ending up together in the same place), and there’s a feeling of plausibility in this world that now has dinosaurs free to roam certain areas of our planet. 

Dern, Neill, and Goldblum are very welcome in their reprised roles, all three settling into a comfortable rapport with one another, and also working well when they eventually encounter the new characters. Pratt and Howard are just fine, although they have never been as good in the lead roles as other options we could have had, and Scott has fun as the typical rich guy who wants to play god in ways that might have unforeseen consequences. There are also enjoyable performances from DeWanda Wise (playing Kayla, a pilot who ends up helping our main characters) and Mamoudou Athie (as Ramsay, the nervous young man tasked with showing Sattler and Grant around Biosyn). The one sour note is, unfortunately, Sermon. As decent as she was in the last film, she feels completely out of place and unconvincing here. Perhaps the writing also works against her, or maybe her performance just feels more full of affectation now she is a bit older and a bit more self-conscious.

The other main performances come from the dinosaurs, of course, and they are as good as ever. You get another enjoyable variety of creatures, with some of them being VERY cute (baby triceratops WILL make you go “awwwwww”), and the blending of animatronics and CGI is pretty flawless throughout.

What more could you want? The score brings in the obvious cues when expected, there are some fun lines of dialogue that work on a meta level without stopping everything to wink at the audience, and it once again allows our old pal, the t-rex, to steal a couple of scenes and remind everyone of how much we all love to gape at a t-rex. 

8/10

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