Jessica is plagued by nightmares that include her mentally ill father Ben and a fictional character from her books, Simon the spider.

When the family moves into Jessica's childhood home, Alice discovers a teddy bear named Chauncey and forms a bond with him.

Jessica narrowly stops Alice from slamming her hand down onto a nail, prompting her to call child psychologist Dr. Soto.

In February 2023, Deadline Hollywood reported that Lionsgate acquired worldwide rights to the Blumhouse horror film, Imaginary.

[5][4] In the United States and Canada, Imaginary was released alongside Kung Fu Panda 4 and Cabrini, and was projected to gross $10–14 million from 3,118 theaters in its opening weekend.

The website's consensus reads: "Imaginary's core concept is solid enough to produce a handful of scares, but too much of its potential is lost in a clichéd story that gets bogged down in world-building.

"[16] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 34 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

[14] Variety's Owen Gleiberman called it "a watchable mess of a child's-play fright flick, exemplifies the trend of overwrought too-muchness" and also wrote "despite a few creepy moments, [the film] is starved for scenes that make the fear it's showing you relatable".

[18] Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter praised Wise's and the younger's cast performances, but wrote "Imaginary, which starts out as a relatively low-key suspenser with intriguing psychological depth, eventually succumbs to the inanities plaguing so many recent horror efforts (like the killer pool in the same company's Night Swim)".

[19] Wilson Chapman of IndieWire gave the film a grade of "C", writing "Even at its most entertaining, Imaginary has about as much staying power as the figments of imagination that give it its name.

[20] Robert Abele writing for the Los Angeles Times criticized director Wadlow with being "terrible with actors", saying that he "can even make a motionless plush animal seem poorly directed".