Splitting Family Horrors
by Kristin Battestella
Despite feminine and non-white strides in their scary storytelling, these recent family-oriented household horrors make for some wanted-to-like-it-but split decision viewing.
Imaginary – Returning to the childhood home, titular games, and teddy bears doom a blended multi-racial family in this 2024 Blumhouse yarn starring DeWanda Wise (She's Gotta Have It). Opening spider transformations are just dream scares for our children's author and illustrator; fake startles and the stereotypical texting teen daughter get old fast. A lame boy next door also exists solely for bathroom stupids, and the toy bear zooming down the hallway for a monster fright is more filler than fearful. A break-in by the crazy ex-wife wastes time and our nonentity husband goes away on tour – making viewers question if we need anyone but our writer and the younger precocious stepdaughter conveniently named Alice. Thankfully, hide and seek leads to an ominous basement and our child voices both sides of the disturbing conversation with her new imaginary friend. Serious one on one family moments reveal backstory, feelings, and scars before well filmed video therapy chats make for an eerie psychosis. Psychologist worries, bittersweet visits with dad at the assisted living, uncovering childhood bear drawings, and history repeating itself phrases lead to stuffed animal surprises and missing children. Our bear's scavenger hunt is a spell for crossing over into the imaginary world – doing something that scares you, gets you hurt and in trouble with effigies, bugs, and matches. Unfortunately, it takes an hour to get to this fantastical leap, and the audience may not follow. Our teen does end up believing, however not because of her own family's encounters, but due to outside reinforcement. Obnoxious twists descend into overlong, contrived fun house set pieces, goofy sing songs, laughable creepy kids, and comical giant bears explained via Inside Out references from unnecessary exposition characters who are happy to be on the other side. The nonsensical, unable to see, too dark never world; but wait there's more self sacrifice; and saccharin faux escapes go on and on until burning down the house is the only recourse. Good luck explaining that to the authorities! The husband never comes back asking WTF, either – but there's another kid with another teddy bear that's apparently the same thing. This could have been a psychological versus horror twofer under ninety minutes highlighting Wise's well done repression. If you can chuckle at the silly choices done instead, this can be entertaining. However there's nothing scary about the LOL bug eye monster people.
Kept Woman – A robbery in the city sends our engaged couple to the suburban quaint with a too groovy to be true neighbor in this 2015 ninety minute thriller. The mortgage is precarious, and thus Jessica gets along better with every other man than her fiance. However, she also wastes time with online friends investigating true crimes when she's supposed to be writing a book. Our breadwinner mocks her whodunits, dismissing Jessica's nosy suspicions about their Professor of Men's Studies neighbor Simon. The first half hour is a little long in establishing their dynamic before a weak catalyst gets the weary Jessica alone with Simon – drugged and waking in a retro pink and yellow kitschy basement with the perfectly fifties Robin warning Jessica not to make Simon angry. Simon brings Jessica vintage gifts and insists Robin make her feel welcome while he packs her bags to feign having left her fiance. Her betrothed leaves a jerky voicemail that he'll apologize to her face later, but we shouldn't see anything outside once we are locked in the bunker. Creepy bedroom doo wop, betrayals, and apologies lead to revelations of a previous woman, iron burns, and punishment when you don't listen. Jessica has to play sweet, dress demure, and use her typewriter, but Simon vows to take care of which woman is pretending or lying – leading to sobbing in the bedroom and whirring saws. Unfortunately, the unnecessary, nonsensical outside storyline deflates the congested bunker disturbia. The couple's BFF cop never followed up on Simon admitting to a dalliance with a student, but the online crime group put the missing girls on campus pieces together. Wasting time on more tangents detracts from the lipstick on the collar and foreshadowed signals. We also never learn why the mid-century nostalgia. How did he afford this elaborate home? Why are there two bedrooms with two women when it repeatedly causes conflict – Madonna and Whore mommy issues? It takes our fiance the entire movie to get a clue, for he's more annoyed at her leaving him in a real estate lurch, throwing away her possessions while she's actually being assaulted and believing she found someone else because he cheated before their engagement. It's shitty that Jessica remains with her fiance when he gave up searching for her for almost two months, and the final fight is rushed for a silly one year later prison visit when I'd rather have seen the titular book success.
Nope – Keith David (The Thing) gravitas, Donna Mills (Falcon Crest) humor, and Michael Wincott (The Crow) cranky accent director Jordan Peele's (Us) 2022 weird western metaphors amid dusty California isolation, horses in fear, and fatal objects falling from the sky. Green screen wrangling and safety meeting spins from sister Keke Palmer (Scream Queens) are awkward, and brother Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) is selling off horses to a neighboring theme park run by former child star Steven Yeun (Minari). The Black struggle for acknowledgment in The West and Hollywood is immediate with minority contributions ignored and animals misused. Flickering electricity and objects above acerbate our realistic, foul mouthed sibling relationship as they debate the preposterous and hook up cameras in hopes of recording the UFO stealing their horses in the moonlight. Freaky shadows in the barn, bugs on the camera, and mists coming down from the sky are a nope on that shit; yet digital versus film, vinyl, and walkie talkies chronicle our obsession with documenting everything. We view our world through a lens be it on television or own recording of our lives, exploited and exploiting ourselves. Daylight hovering increases as our territorial alien gets a taste for more than horses, and motorcycles in the old west theme park and on horseback rescues provide throwback action alongside the simplicity of not looking an animal in the eye and don't look up clues. Phones go down amid trapped in the truck perils and arguments about staying inside, feeding the monsters, and plans to go analog to defeat it. Unfortunately, silly contemporary references will date the social commentary for future audiences, and silence would have been better than the warped music distortions. Intercut restarts are piece meal not ominous – disjointed amid ill fated monkey sitcoms, morbid memorabilia, and unnecessarily drawn out scenes. Too dark to see cutaways break the UFO momentum for theme park pranks, on set detours, and inside the alien perspectives when we should never leave the family viewpoint. Desperation for the money shot results in a typical sacrifice, and anonymous screaming for a phone or camera even in death is bound by TMZ jokes. News reports, superfluous characters, backstory parallels, and public fatalities detract from the sibling encounters, ballooning 100 minute horrors into an overlong two hours plus. Though entertaining with likable characters, this looses steam with redundant elements that stray from the immediate story and taught metaphors.
