Imaginary Playmate (2006) Dina Meyer, Rick Ravanello, Nancy Sivak, Kurt Evans, Marilyn Vance, Pablo Coffey, Cassandra Sawtel Movie Review

Imaginary Playmate (2006)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Rick Ravanello and Dina Meyer in Imaginary Playmate (2006)

Imaginary Friend or Ghostly Foe

Sometime after the death of his wife Michael Driscoll (Rick Ravanello - The Cave) meets and gets remarried to the attractive and creative Suzanne (Dina Meyer - His and Her Christmas) who along with Michael's daughter Molly (Cassandra Sawtell) move from Chicago to a rural town for a fresh start. For Michael that means trying to turn around a failing timber mill whilst Suzanne sets about fixing up the house they have moved into. When Molly starts talking to an imaginary friend she calls Candace, Suzanne just thinks it is a way of her coping with everything from losing her mum to moving to a new place. But when strange things start to happen Suzanne begins to worry that Candace may actually be a ghost and that their home or Molly is possessed.

Some may say the biggest problem with "Imaginary Playmate" is that it is a made for TV movie. I disagree as made for TV movies are typically made for a specific audience, usually an audience who don't need grit or realism but prefer familiarity and the ease in which a movie is to watch. And technically "Imaginary Playmate" delivers what this sort of audience would want with a cast featuring familiar actors, a not overly complicated storyline which has some mystery and some slight horror whilst not being gritty or requiring too much thinking about.

The biggest problem for me is that "Imaginary Playmate" takes a familiar storyline and doesn't bring it to life. So we have the young child, the step mother, the invisible friend who ends up causing problems and putting the family in danger. But there isn't really anything which gives this life, no great acting, no great horror, it simply delivers the storyline in a middle of the road way. It means for horror fans who watch "Imaginary Playmate" are more likely to find it tedious due to it not only being cliche but also quite slow going, drawing out the familiar storyline.

What this all boils down to is that if you like easy to watch TV movies but fancy something a little creepier then "Imaginary Playmate" might entertain. But for movie fans, especially those of the horror genre, this will probably be too weak and lacking not just in originality but the sort of shocks which would make it edgy.


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