"Imaginary" - Review

Children's picture book artist Jessica (DeWanda Wise) must navigate the trials and tribulations of moving back into her childhood home and caring for her 2 stepdaughters, complicated by the realisation that she is trapped in a Jeff Wadlow movie.

Another banger from the master of incompetence, Jeff Wadlow!
In an era of skin deep corporate, name recognition swill and "brand recognition" designed for algorithms and metric data making for shitty movies; it's refreshing to have a movie fumbled by an incompetent dullard rooted in the horror movie wastelands of the 2000s. I've missed you, Jeff Wadlow!
If you don't know who this cinematic visionary is, allow me to regale you: Wadlow is behind "Truth or Dare" (reminding people that Blumhouse started out with crap which made money... AFTER they had started seeing success and winning Oscars); "Kick Ass 2" (the sequel so bad it stopped them making a 3rd before Mark Millar's writing could: so, you know, the best one!), "Never Back Down" (the martial arts movie shot like fucking "Dragonball"), "Fantasy Island" (his... "best" one?) and "Cry Wolf" (fuck my life, I hate that movie... Okay, that's the worst one. Being the worst Jeff Wadlow movie is like being the most generic English singer-songwriter, like, they're all pretty bad, but one of them is Jake Bugg.). Wadlow's a man who knows no fear, knows not cringe, despises tonal consistency, and is almost always on the verge of knowing what he is doing.
This is firmly a Wadlow masterpiece.
All hail Jeff Wadlow, for bringing out things in bad horror films as a checklist, and showing us the way to badness: just have a vision which fails!
He is like a facsimile of other, good horror movies: objects will move when characters are not looking, a looming, shadowy figure will be genuinely creepy in the background (the first time...), and the ending features an "Insidious"-esque crossover with M.C Escher.
But the first 10 seconds (new record, Jeff, touche!) are a brightly lit, statically shot spider man in a suit chasing the lead through a dream sequence, marking this firmly as a Wadlow-cinematic universe movie. He has an earnestness on display, but the scripting, pacing, scares, atmosphere and even in some cases acting are just bad.
It's honestly kind of enjoyable like that.
The film plays out like a checklist:
Oh, the wise old lady.
Oh, the kid is being weird.
Oh, the thing the main character is scared of comes back. (Though honestly, that is oddly competent for you Jeff, kudos!)
Oh, the eldest daughter is kind of a bitch.
Oh, the boyfriend is COMICALLY shit.
Anyway, it has a few goofy, funny things (the dad just leaves for the movie, and the ending has 3 fake outs, and some of the monsters are very "Coraline"), but no Lindy Booth in this one, so zero stars.
Kudos Jeff, I want more shit movies like this.