Blumhouse continues to surpass the average horror films with its products. They’re rarely ever great but they avoid a lot of the pitfalls of other titles. Give me this over titles like Alien, Friday the 13th, and a bunch of the other big horror franchises. These films tend to avoid getting too violent or anything which is nice. That said, at times it can also feel like the villain is being too merciful to the point where it doesn’t make sense. After a point you gotta just take the opponents out right?

The film starts off with introducing us to Jessica and her husband Max. Max had a messy divorce a while back but he is hoping things will be stable now and his two daughters Alice and Taylor will like Jessica. They all moved to a new place for a fresh start but unfortunately this house comes with a dark secret. There is a teddy bear named Chauncey here who quickly becomes friends with Alice. Nothing wrong with having an imaginary friend right?….well there might be a problem with this one. Chauncey is constantly in a bloodlusted state and continues to get more and more demented. Can Jessica stop something that may not have a physical body?

Now I will say that the premise is handled in a rather generic way. This is pretty much the same as M3gan, and all the Chucky films. You have a stuffed animal that talks to a kid and gradually gives more and more demented conditions to friendship. The little girl Alice is incredibly naive and not particularly smart so she falls for this every time. It’s a story concept that we’ve seen many times before. Now granted, this does beat all of the Chucky films and M3gan but you will still be surprised that it didn’t try something a bit different. The film doesn’t really make use of its premise until the very end.

I would say Alice is super annoying here the whole time. I understand that she’s young but she should still be old enough to tell that Chauncey is psychotic. Telling her she has to hurt herself is just unhinged and that would be the time to tell her parents. There is no indication that there is any mind control at work here or anything like that so instead that just means Alice is making these mistakes out of her own free will. It’s a really bad look because this just goes past the realms of common sense. Even right up through the end she is still making a lot of mistakes.

Her older sister Taylor isn’t the smartest either though. She is also naive but in other ways like when she invites a guy over to her house while the mother is gone despite not even knowing him. Naturally the guy is into drugs and is not a good role model at all. So things could have gotten even worse for her if Jessica wasn’t around. Taylor just likes to be a rebel even when it doesn’t make sense to be one. It’s hard to sympathize with her when she is in the wrong on every scene. Not a very reasonable person at all.

As for Max, he seems okay but doesn’t really end up being helpful at all. He is gone for large portions of the film and is generally oblivious. It might be for the best since I can picture him being annoying and not believing what is going on. As for Jessica, she is a good character even if I find it hard to believe just how much of her past she forgot. The film’s weak rationale for the memory loss just doesn’t work. Well I suppose that’s more about suspension of disbelief than blaming the character.

There’s nothing bad about Jessica, she does an admirable job of trying to bond with the two kids. I also think she was very appropriate in jumping into the conversation Taylor was having with the guy to set boundaries. So Jessica had a solid backbone the whole time and did her best with stopping the villains. She was more proactive than a lot of other characters would be in her place.

I do have some problems with Chauncey though. The first is that he’s on fraud watch the whole time. He doesn’t manage to take down the boy who messed with Alice’s stuff. Since Chauncey is supposed to be super protective why not bump the guy off? That part didn’t really make any sense. Then once the characters are in his domain, he isn’t able to take down almost anybody? He takes out a single victim and that’s it. Very disappointing showing for this guy. I also think his true form could have been cooler.

The giant bear is hype but the shadow human silhouette? Nahhh that was a bit too generic. The eye popping out effect also looked a bit more strange than scary. Honestly the film just overthought itself. The big bear form was plenty scary, focusing on that would be a really good idea. Chauncey’s also not that spooky when talking through Alice. Having him do more on his own would be a good idea. Even the final jump scare of the movie is really half hearted. Should have gone a bit further/had some movement to really work.

A very valid criticism for the film is that it’s not particularly scary. At its core this feels more like a film about Jessica trying to fit into the family and it’s a wholesome enough plot. The horror around it feels rather mild the whole time. Again that is probably good in terms of keeping things from getting too violent. There is really only one bloody scene and it’s mainly off camera. They still could have found ways to have had Chauncey be a little more relevant though.

We do have a spooky next door neighbor character though. Would have been nice if Taylor had more common sense though. Why go into a stranger’s house in the middle of the night? I don’t care if the lady is 90 years old, that still could end really badly especially with how over the top shady she was. Everybody tends to be shady in this kind of film. The weakest part of the film is probably Jessica’s past with her father though. The movie spends a decent amount of time here without a great payoff. At the same time, the two scariest moments of the film involve his transformation so maybe it was worth it to include him in there. It might sound crazy to say this but the spider monster was scarier than Chauncey.

Overall, For a film about an imaginary friend you would expect more scenes that revolve around the supernatural world. The imaginary friend part isn’t really relevant until the literal climax of the film and that’s where the missed opportunities were. I think the climax should have been longer and should have started earlier. That’s the meat and potatoes of the story after all. The twist about Chauncey’s true target was really good and I also liked a good fakeout there. It’s really good stuff but all crammed in at the very end of the adventure when that should have been the main focus. Check this out if you want a decent thriller title but don’t expect to get scared at all. It’s not really that kind of film.

Overall 6/10