Imaginary Friend

PG-13 5.7
2012 1 hr 39 min Thriller

During her traumatic childhood with an abusive father, Emma relied on an imaginary friend for strength. She is now an artist struggling with mental illness living with her apparently loving husband, Brad. But when Emma's imaginary friend starts reappearing, she knows she's losing her grip. Desperate to save her marriage and show Brad she is in control, Emma takes drastic measures to free herself of her torment and her imaginary friend.

  • Cast:
    Lacey Chabert , Ethan Embry , Amanda Schull , Paul Sorvino , Jacob Young , Marc McClure , Angeline-Rose Troy

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Reviews

Matrixston
2012/06/02

Wow! Such a good movie.

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Dotsthavesp
2012/06/03

I wanted to but couldn't!

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Geraldine
2012/06/04

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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Scarlet
2012/06/05

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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TheBlueHairedLawyer
2012/06/06

While the acting was generally okay and the soundtrack wasn't too bad, the plot itself was terrible. It's just another movie to make imaginary friends seem like a mental illness. Lots of adults have imaginary friends, hell, I have one, and it's movies like this one, Drop Dead Fred (1991), Hide & Seek (2005) and Magic (1978) that give imaginary friends a bad rep. This film follows the basic formula for these types of movies.Emma has it all, she's an adult woman who lives a fancy high-class life as an artist but is on strict medication and is married to a kind of jerky psychiatrist. As a child she had an abusive father and created an imaginary friend, Brittany, to help her through dark times. Her loving headshrinker husband suggests medication but Emma loves Brittany and doesn't want to destroy her only friend with drugs. But is Brittany not so imaginary after all, or is there something more going on? Well, Emma is a typical Hollywood portrayal of mental illness in a person, frequently shown popping antidepressants/antipsychotics and having hallucinations that turn out to be a real person she is seeing, and her sleazy husband certainly isn't helping anything as he cheats and plots to have his wife sent off to a mental asylum forever.I wish film companies would consider their viewers more often though; I'm sure I'm not the only one who has gone through something traumatic and dealt with it differently than most. I created Syd my imaginary friend when I was in grade 5 and he's been around for years. When my psychiatrist found out I thought for sure he'd tell me to get rid of Syd or start popping pills, but he said that many fiction novelists end up with imaginary friends or keep them from childhood, and that as long as Syd isn't dangerous and doesn't pose any threat he's a great support mechanism so long as I can tell the difference between imagination and reality, which I can. I don't like how the film portrayed Emma as "instant nutcase" for having an imaginary friend, nor do I like how they portrayed the psychiatrist husband as a cheating, stuck-up know-it-all who automatically wants his own wife sent away, even though he was scheming with his mistress in the film.This film is the perfect example of why Lifetime should stick to their true crime films and teen dramas. I don't recommend watching this at all, it's pretty pathetic.

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ivegonemod
2012/06/07

I thought this was a good movie, but could only give it a five. It was just too predictable. I knew as soon as I saw Brittany that she was real and the husband was behind her being there. I also found the movie to be quite implausible.It was pretty clear that Lacey's character was really off at the start, and then all of a sudden she was perfectly normal with no reasoning. It was never made clear how she figured out the husband's plot, one assumes that Brittany told her. Why would Brittany turn on the husband in favor of the wife? Either way she was getting paid.I find it hard to believe that Ethan's character could be turned into a pill-popping psycho in a matter of hours, and all his doctor friends turned on him in a second.It was great seeing Jacob Young. Love him!

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wamwatcher
2012/06/08

Recorded this off Lifetime basically to look at Lacey Chabert (who has some EXCELLENT bikini shots) but got hooked to see where the story goes.More along the lines of "will this plot/conspiracy work" than "where is this going" because the filmmakers show you everything fairly early.....it's one of those Lifetime revenge movies done well.....Fun to see Ethan Embry as a villain, lots of other great/interesting actors hidden in this: Paul Sorvino, Marc McClure, Ted McGinley, Heather Tom, Larry Poindexter (don't do enough reviews to always remember than 10 line rule, no wonder everyones so damn wordy!)

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dutchchocolatecake
2012/06/09

I'm giving it all away so if you don't want the entire thing spoiled, don't read this review!In a nutshell:Little girl from an abusive, but rich family; grows up to be a fragile yet schizophrenic artist with huge trust fund and a husband just as rotten as her father. He tries to drive her crazier than she already is by having his mistress pose as her childhood hallucination imaginary friend to have her committed; so that he and the mistress can live together in comfort off of artist's trust fund. Schizophrenic artist figures it out, and with the help of said mistress manages to turn the tables on him; and he ends up taking a ride in the Twinkie Truck instead.The acting is pretty good, even if the character creation is mediocre and predictable at best. Anyone with a handful of brain cells can figure out where the movie is going about a third of the way through. Not a bad movie overall, but like most flicks that air on Lifetime; it is too contrived to be genuinely engaging.

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