“Imaginary” centers on Jessica (DeWanda Wise), who moves back into her childhood home with her family. Once there, her young stepdaughter Alice (Pyper Braun) develops a strange attachment to a stuffed bear named Chauncey. Alice begins to play games with Chauncey, which quickly leads to a sinister place. Tom Payne, Taegen Burns, Veronica Falcon, and Betty Buckley also star.
As a studio, Lionsgate excels when it is working in the low-to-mid-budget realm, so this is right in its wheelhouse. Given the $13 million budget, even if this movie only makes comparable money to Blumhouse’s “Night Swim” ($51 million worldwide), it should be just fine. Once VOD and other revenue streams are factored in, it would still be a winner. That wouldn’t make it the next “M3GAN” (the killer babysitting robot film pulled in $181 million last year and paved the way for next year’s “M3GAN 2.0”), but they can’t all be record-breakers. Sometimes, a modest hit gets the job done.
Benefiting this movie’s case is the fact that no other outright studio horror movies are coming down the pipeline for several weeks. Director Michael Mohan’s “Immaculate,” starring Sydney Sweeney, is the next one up to bat, and that doesn’t arrive until March 22. So, for horror fans, this scary bear named Chauncey will effectively be the only game in town for a few weeks.
“Imaginary” hits theaters on March 8, 2024.