Imaginary Friend

Great movie totally gonna by it on dvd, totally great movie with a twist.

It's just bad. People will blame the actors but I'm guessing it's the director. The entire movie is an awkward and unnecessary appeal to the male gaze. I know it might seem like a stretch, but I get the feeling the director is a creep. All the female characters adhere to a strange, soft spoken and sultry prototype the entire film and its detrimental to their performance. It's blatant career suicide for all women involved. Poor Gretchen Weiners deserved better.

It has a very soap opera vibe. The plot is promising but it's poorly executed. The music doesn't fit the scene (think suspenseful music alongside stills of art supplies). If you want to watch a bad movie, which honestly sometimes that's what I'm looking for, this is a great pick. Want something to fall asleep to? This is it. Want something to passively watch as you clean house? This might be a good pick. Something to get drunk with friends and yell at while you take shots? It's an alright choice.

I knew going in this was a Lifetime movie and set my expectations accordingly, then was pleasantly surprised by how intense it became. It starts out with a slow burn then ramps up and doesn't let go until the very end. That's where it lost me, though, that terribly explained ending that didn't tie up all the loose ends. Thinking I may have missed something, I looked for online reviews of this movie and didn't find anything helpful. It jumps from the climax to a wind down scene, a just-deserts scene, and then a final scene. The problem is the climax doesn't resolve and forcing a scene change where they did is a cheat because there was no good way for the heroine to get out of the situation. I know I'm being a little vague, that's because I don't want to give anything away. It's frustrating though because everything up to that point was done so well, but that ending... No thriller should leave you with unanswered questions.

This film is way too predictable. It starts out with a pretty decent premise, but the viewer figures things out very early on. From then, it's just a question of how the plot will get to the inevitable ending. A psychological thriller/suspense film --which is what this trying to be--needs a lot more development and imagination to work.

The cast does give it a good shot, but needs more to work with. Ethan Embry and Paul Sorvino (In a small role) are particularly good. Lacey Chabert holds her own, too. Of course, she has several scenes requiring her to prance around in a bikini.

Overall, this film falls slightly short of a recommendation.

This movie annoyed me from beginning to end (how did I make it to the end? Good question. Now THERE'S a mystery).

Every relationship, every character, every conversation, every conflict, every scenario defied believability. It was clear from the get-go they were going to spring some sort of Hitchcockian fake out on us. I suppose that's why I stuck it out. I was curious to see if they could, some how, pull off a Hitchcock-meets-Shyamalan switcheroo in the end.

They could not.

Absolute garbage.

Ten minutes in I'm like, 'ask her one more time if she's taken her pills and I swear to whosoever, I'll punch the screen ... or take a drink.'

I'm no pharmacist but, are antipsychotics supposed to be eaten like PEZ candy? Cause that's how these idiots took them.

The brilliance of Shyamalan's "Sixth Sense" is that, when (after learning Bruce Willis was a dead person) we went back and reviewed all the previous interactions with him, we could see he wasn't really there. The viewers own expectations filled in the blanks. Beautifully executed psychological trick. In this movie, you find yourself coaching from the sidelines, 'If, later, you want me to believe she was only pretending to be a ghost, then don't put her in impossible supernatural situations now. It won't add up.'

Also. The characters were one dimensional and cliche. Misogynistic men and hysterical or devious women. I suppose in that way it was a bit Hitchcockian.

To the two actors who played "Mad Men" minor characters (Greg Harris and Mel, the smarmy soap opera dude who wanted to have a threesom with Don and Megan Draper) ... sorry things haven't gone so well for your careers.