As John Krasinski’s Ryan Reynolds comedy IF prepares for a big new trailer during the Super Bowl, another movie exploring the world of childhood imaginary friends is also stepping up its marketing. The latest look at Imaginary—the freaky teddy bear movie—is here, and it cleverly leans into similarities with Blumhouse’s 2023 hits M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s.
There are also shades of late, great horror anthology series Channel Zero’s fourth season, The Dream Door, in the detail that DeWanda Wise’s character, Jessica, is confronted with an eerie companion she thought she’d left behind in her childhood. But instead of Channel Zero’s contortionist clown guy, Imaginary gives us Chauncey the teddy bear, the vessel for an entity that is furious at Jessica for abandoning it—and has her young stepdaughter, Alice (Pyper Braun) in its sights. Killer toys? Yep, sounds like M3GAN. Killer teddy bear? Freddy’s.
While “sinister imaginary friends” is nothing new for horror, Imaginary looks to combine the gruesomely fun elements of those two recent Blumhouse hits—plus another trope used in Blumhouse’s Insidious, among many others: bringing in the “expert” in whatever weird phenomena is at hand; here, she’s played by Betty Buckley. And with a cast headed by the excellent Wise, the best part of Jurassic World Dominion, this actually looks like a lot of fun. Freaky teddy bear fun.
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Imaginary, which is co-written and directed by Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare, Fantasy Island, Kick-Ass 2), arrives March 8, so you have plenty of time to purge any wayward stuffed animals you have may have hanging around the house… juuuust in case.
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