There’s nothing more terrifying than a creepy kid and their doll. Or their toy. In the instance of Blumhouse’s new horror movie Imaginary, it’s about a little girl and her bear. Except that the bear is actually a vessel for a demon friend who wants to take her away. And for someone who had an imaginary friend growing up, this is definitely going to make me side-eye child me but also kids today that have imaginary friends that enter the creep factor of this trailer.
In the official trailer, we get to meet Jessica played by DeWanda Wise. She’s moving back into her childhood home with her family. Right off the bat, weird things start happening when her youngest stepdaughter Alice “develops an area attachment to a stuffed bear named Chauncey she finds in the basement.” From what we can tell, Chauncey used to belong to Jessica and was abandoned when Jessica moved away. And he makes it clear that he’s not too fond of her anymore. He’s fond of Alice and the increasingly sinister game that they play together.
As the trailer goes on you get to see that Chauncey is able to move and creepily hide under blankets before revealing its true form to what we assume as a babysitter. We also get to see that Jessica definitely has a past with Chauncey that is just as sinister. And if there’s any way that she’s going to rescue Alice from wherever Chauncey has taken her, she needs to confront her past and how this demon played into her childhood. Because Chauncey, like every other evil doll or stuffed thing, is trying to make it to this reality. And he’s definitely trying to possess Alice and change her behavior.
On a side note, it’s kind of nice to see Blumhouse use a cute teddy bear. Yes, the teddy bear is dirty. But it’s cute. The original Annabelle doll was a Raggedy Anne doll. But she was cute. And I think there was a missed opportunity in making Annabelle look inherently creepy from the start. It kind of took the mystery away as to what was the evil in the story. The same thing applies to M3GAN. I knew I couldn’t trust her from the start. Imaginary is seemingly going back and trying something different with a cute teddy bear that will terrify audiences and parents.
Watch the trailer below:
Imaginary hits theaters on March 8, 2023.
