By: Kira Crockett
On March 8, 2024, Lionsgate released the movie ¨Imaginary¨ Don't let the title fool you however, this is not just about imaginary friends. It's a horror movie about imaginary friends. The movie starts at Jessica's childhood house, downstairs and a little door with a flower sticker on it. The door flies open where one of the main characters, Jessica, is running out of the room screaming, crying, and running. Behind her dad who has blue glowing eyes and is covered in blood. He is chasing her and she is screaming still, finally she wakes up. It was just a dream! However that's only the beginning to the scares Jessica is about to start facing. She wakes up with her fiance and is worried from the dream but doesn't say anything. They get up and start taking everything to the car and moving trucks because they and her fiance's two kids were moving back into Jessica's childhood home. Little did any of them know what happened in that house and how it would come back to life when they arrived. Taylor, who is 16 years old and Alice, who is 10, arrive at the new home. Taylor is very skeptical of Jessica at this point just because of her being with her dad and taking them to a new home. Alice loves Jessica already though.
They walk into the house and Jessica starts to show Alice where she used to draw on the walls when she was a little girl. All the walls in that room were covered in art and Alice was amazed. Jessica told her she could draw on it now too and it could be her room! At that point Taylor came in and said she already promised to help Alice pick out her room and so it wasn't going to be that one. Max, Jessica's fiance comes in and hugs her and says that Taylor will warm up eventually she just needs time. As time goes on the house starts to get a little creepier with weird unexplained noises and things of that matter. One of the first few days they are at home Alice makes her way downstairs. She saw the door with the flower on it, which was meant to prevent it from opening. However the door was open and there was a teddy bear sitting right there. Alice was excited to have a new toy so she picked him up and immediately fell in love. Alice names him ¨Chauncey¨ The bear eventually is making Alice act out and she is really emotional and always has to have Chauncey with her. She and Chauncey always played together.
One day Chauncey asked her to play a game, but a game that involved hurting herself at one point. Jessica read the paper of all what Alice had to do and ran outside quickly to see if Alice was out there. Alice was about to hurt herself and Jessica grabbed her quickly before it happened. She was crying and then they both started crying. At this point Jessica knew that Chauncey wasn't a normal bear, there was something evil in the bear. She called in an expert to try to talk to Alice and see if she would open up about what was really going on. The Dr. asked Alice to come in the room with her and she asked if she could be Chauncey, the Dr. said yes. She went into the room and started talking to Alice. Immediately she noticed that Alice was scared. She told Alice to tell Chauncey how much he hurt her and made her upset. Apparently Chauncey got really upset with the Dr. He told Alice to tell her if she didn't stop talking he would hurt her. Alice started crying and said maybe they shouldn't be friends anymore. At that point the Dr had to stop the session because she got so scared. They came out of the room and Jessica told Alice to go play while she talked to the Dr. Jessica said ¨where's the bear?¨ The doctor replied with ¨what bear?¨ Jessica was freaked out and explained that Alice had always carried a bear around with her. The dr. said no she didn't see a bear at all. Jessica went to Taylor and asked her if she had seen the bear that Alice always had with her. Taylor said, "No, I've never seen a bear with Alice.¨ Jessica started to get really scared and told Taylor to go check on Alice. Meanwhile Alice found Chauncey scratching a desk in Jessica's art room. She told Chauncey she was sorry.
He said she said they shouldn't be friends anymore. Alice said she was sorry and took it back, Chauncey then scooted to a basket of items she had collected for their dangerous game. Chauncey wanted her to finish the game. The game that would take her away from everyone else and Chauncey would get to have her to himself if she finished. Taylor didn't see Alice and ran to Jessica. They both freaked out and looked everywhere but couldn't seem to find her. The neighbor, an old woman who had been there since Jessica was a kid, saw Taylor outside and explained to her that something very similar happened to Jessica when she was a kid. They all went back to the house and headed downstairs, which oddly enough the old woman knew that Alice would have been down there because that's where Jessica's was when she was a kid. When they got downstairs they noticed the door that had the smiley sticker that was supposed to be shut was open. Inside on the wall a painted small doorway was now faint and not glowing. They freaked out because Chauncey had taken Alice to another realm, an imagination realm where everything was just the way you wanted it but in a children's way.
They repainted the door but the only problem was they had to do everything that was similar to Alice's list to even enter the realm. One including hurting yourself, Jessica didn't even think about it desperate to get Alice back and stabbed herself in her arm. She finished the bucket, repainted the spot and then they crawled through the realm. They propped the door open so they could get back out. Jessica and Taylor started walking and then the old woman shut their way out, on purpose. They were very upset with her and she was trying to justify that they could just stay there forever because it was better than the world, and she had been waiting to go in the realm for a while. Next thing a door opens and a bear eats the old woman. The rest of the movie is how Jessica and Taylor retrieve and convince Alice to leave with them, fight Chauncey, and find a way to escape. It gets pretty complicated but if you want to find out how the movie ends you will have to check it out yourself!! However, at the very end Jessica, Taylor, and Alice were staying at a hotel because something happened to their house (watch to find out) and they saw a boy with a bear… that is Chauncey. They all look at each other and ask if they should find a different hotel, which they all respond with ¨yes¨. Overall the movie was really good and intense, not too scary but creepy.