IMAGINARY

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens as a woman named Jessica (DeWanda Wise) is being stalked by a creature posing as her father Ben (Samuel Salary). The creature takes the form of a hideous spider before Jessica wakes up in her bed, as it was just a nightmare.

Jessica is an award-winning author of the children’s book series “Molli Millipede”. She is married to Max (Tom Payne) and is a stepmother to his daughters, Taylor (Taegen Burns) and Alice (Pyper Braun). While Alice has taken well to Jessica, Taylor still gives her attitude. The family moves into Jessica’s childhood home that she had to leave after an incident with Ben as a child where he appeared to snap and attack her, leading to her having scars on her arms.

Alice claims to be talking to an imaginary friend. She follows the voice to a space in the house where she comes across a teddy bear that calls itself Chauncey. Meanwhile, Taylor sees a strange woman, Gloria (Betty Buckley), staring at her from her window. When she goes outside to see, she meets a neighbor boy, Liam (Matthew Sato). When he tries to invite Taylor to hang out, Jessica steps in, which embarrasses Taylor and makes her storm up to her room.

Jessica and Max think it’s cute that Alice has an imaginary friend, though she always appears to have Chauncey by her side. Gloria later approaches Jessica and introduces herself, saying that she used to be her babysitter when Jessica lived in the house as a child, but Jessica barely remembers her time in the house before her mother passed away.

At night, Jessica overhears Alice having a tea party with Chauncey. She then hears Alice telling someone that they look pretty, and Jessica hears a woman responding with “Thank you.” The woman is Samantha (Alix Angelis), Taylor and Alice’s mentally disturbed mother. She lunges at Jessica until the girls get Samantha off. The police arrive along with Max, and Taylor confesses to her dad that she had been texting her mom, thinking that she was getting better. Jessica then puts Alice to bed and tries to talk to her about the incident, but Alice says that Chauncey knows Jessica would understand, since she had a friend like him when she was a kid.

Max goes away on personal business, leaving Jessica to watch over the girls. Alice plays a scavenger hunt game with Chauncey, while Jessica slips out to visit Ben at the nursing home where he lives. He has lost much of his sanity after the incident, with Jessica still trying to reach in to talk to him. He becomes hysterical and grabs Jessica’s wrist, causing her pain and prompting her to leave.

Taylor invites Liam to come over, to Alice’s displeasure. Liam gives Taylor drugs (later revealed to just be his mom’s allergy medicine) and tries to convince her to raid Max’s liquor stash. After he breaks a bottle, Liam goes to get towels to clean up, but he sees what looks like Chauncey near him while the string on his back is pulled all the way out, playing the tune that accompanies the bear. The string appears in the darkness, with Chauncey inching nearer toward Liam until he lets go of the string. Chauncey then appears to take the form of a more monstrous bear before Liam falls over in fright. Jessica arrives and finds him, then contacts Liam’s mom before scolding Taylor.

Jessica finds that some of her drawings have had the heads cut out, which she knows was done by Alice. She goes into Alice’s room and tries to give her a heart-to-heart about how she is acting out over her mom, which Jessica understands after what happened to her dad. She then hears and sees Alice outside, realizing that she was just talking to Chauncey under the covers. Jessica finds and looks at the scavenger hunt list and finds some items pertaining to the list: “something that scares you” (a jar of bugs), “something that will get you in trouble” (the cutouts of Jessica’s drawings), and “something that hurts”. Jessica sees Alice grabbing a piece of a wooden fence and getting ready to impale her palm on it (she sees it as a flower), but Jessica moves the board away in time, the nail just grazing Alice’s arm.

Jessica calls for a psychologist, Dr. Soto (Veronica Falcon), to come and speak to Alice. Dr. Soto records the session and watches as Alice talks to Chauncey, seemingly speaking on his behalf. Chauncey starts to get more aggressive, calling Jessica “fake mommy” before Alice turns around, and Dr. Soto sees that Alice’s mouth is not moving as Chauncey is talking. When Dr. Soto privately talks to Jessica, she says she did not see a bear. Jessica then asks Taylor if she saw the bear, but she says no. Jessica then looks at the tape and finds that there really is no teddy bear physically present, and she and Alice were the only ones who could really see Chauncey. Dr. Soto also shows Jessica footage of a boy named Luis (Noah Martinez), who cut off his thumb after his imaginary friend “Randy Rabbit” put the boy through the same thing that Chauncey is putting Alice through. Luis also says “never ever”, just like Alice does.

Alice later disappears after talking to Chauncey again. Jessica and Taylor go out on the streets to look for her, and Taylor blames Jessica for Alice’s disappearance due to her upending their lives with her presence. Taylor goes back out on her own and runs into Gloria, who invites her into her home to explain what happened to Jessica as a child. Chauncey was also her imaginary friend as a child, but her father had intervened and went mad as a result, leading to Jessica getting hurt.

Jessica goes through her old belongings and finds a drawing she did of a place called the “Never Ever”. She draws over the scribbles she made in her room as a child before Taylor and Gloria return. They conclude that in order to open the door to the Never Ever, they have to play the scavenger hunt. Jessica gathers several items before getting to the “something that hurts” part, so she stabs her hand with scissors and puts everything in a bowl to burn. Nothing happens until Jessica harshly tells Taylor that it’s her fault that Alice disappeared because she should have been watching her sister. With Taylor’s feelings hurt and Jessica having felt hurt to say it, their real pain is enough to open the door.

The ladies enter into the Never Ever, a world controlled by the imaginations of the children who inhabit it. As they search for Alice, they come across a door showing the night of the incident in Jessica’s childhood. Ben had gotten her out of the Never Ever, but Chauncey (or the entity calling itself Chauncey) was trying to pull him back in. Ben looked into the creature’s eyes, which is what drove him mad, but he did it to ensure that Chauncey could never take his daughter. Gloria closes the door that would get them out, as she has been obsessed for decades with finding the source of imaginary friends since she was mocked for her work. Just as she muses over the endless possibilities of this world, Chauncey shows up in his monster bear form and tears Gloria apart.

Jessica and Taylor manage to find Alice in a room made to look like the family’s old apartment in the city. Alice is dressed like a princess surrounded by presents, and she even has Samantha there. Jessica and Taylor have to convince Alice that it’s not real, and Jessica manages to open a new door for them to get out. Chauncey then goes berserk and tries to attack. Taylor and Alice get out while Chauncey chases Jessica in his monster bear form. Jessica stabs him in the eye and makes it through the door and embraces the girls.

Jessica brings Max and the girls to meet Ben. Taylor apologizes for behavior, and Alice calls Jessica “mom”…which is when Jessica realizes she is still in the Never Ever. Chauncey always wanted to use Alice as bait since Jessica was his real target for abandoning him as a child. As it appears that Jessica will remain trapped as Chauncey’s prisoner, Taylor returns to save Jessica. Chauncey takes his true spider monster form and tries to grab Jessica, staring at her with his eyes and nearly driving her mad like her father. Alice then sees spilled lighter fluid and throws a lit match onto it, causing Chauncey to catch fire and to be sealed behind the door. The rest of the house then burns to the ground after Jessica and the girls escape.

The next day, the Jessica, Taylor, and Alice try to check into a hotel, but they get spooked when they see a teddy bear peeking out from behind a chair. It turns out to belong to a little boy, but he tells his mom about his imaginary friend “Rufus”. The camera then pans to show that the bear it’s the very same Chauncey bear as before.

Children's author Jessica moves into her childhood home with her husband Max and stepdaughters Taylor and Alice. Alice makes an imaginary friend named Chauncey, which appears to her as a teddy bear. While Alice seems to be having innocent fun, things start to take a dark turn when Alice nearly hurts herself playing a game with Chauncey.

After a session with a psychologist, it turns out that only Jessica and Alice can see Chauncey's teddy bear form, as Jessica had him as an imaginary friend when she was a child. She repressed the memory of him because of an incident involving her father Ben where he went insane and seemingly attacked her. Alice later disappears into a world called the Never Ever that Chauncey inhabits and has used to lure other children away.

Jessica and Taylor enter the Never Ever along with Gloria, a neighbor who used to babysit Jessica as a child and later devoted her career to learning where imaginary friends came from. As they enter the Never Ever, the ladies see that Ben was protecting Jessica from Chauncey and went mad because he saw Chauncey's true form. Gloria loses her mind and wants to stay in the Never Ever to explore the endless possibilities of the imagination, only for Chauncey to kill her quickly. Jessica and Taylor find Alice and manage to get her out, but Jessica is kept trapped because Chauncey was always targeting her for leaving him as a child. Taylor and Alice help Jessica get out, and Alice burns Chauncey before the rest of the house catches fire.

Jessica and the girls try to check into a hotel but are scared off by seeing another teddy bear. A boy with the teddy tells his mom about his imaginary friend, which is once again Chauncey appearing to this boy in his teddy form.