When Beth’s (Keegan Connor Tracy) son (Jett Klyne) brings home an imaginary friend named “Z,” she becomes concerned that he is falling too deep into a world of make-believe. He starts to display extremely destructive behavior, blaming Z for all of his actions. But after he gets kicked out of school, Beth is forced to find a solution. She medicates her son, making him unable to see his imaginary companion. But now Beth sees Z…and he wants to be her friend.
It’s obvious director Brandon Christensen has been heavily influenced by horror director James Wan (“The Conjuring,” “Insidious”) and that’s a good thing. Over the years, Mr. Wan has, beyond a doubt, reinvented the horror genre to such a point that even though he inserts the obligatory “jump scares” into his horror movies, they transpire when you least expect them, no matter how much of a horror connoisseur or film aficionado you might be. He successfully manages to subvert expectations in every element of his film and just when you are convinced something is about to occur, it doesn’t, leaving you somewhat disillusioned, until the next scene scares the crap out of you. He has also proved that a horror movie doesn’t require a big budget in order to be scary, all you need is a good script, a creepy locale, and good actors, the rest will take care of itself.
With “Z,” Mr. Christensen adds his own directing style, long, uninterrupted single takes of ominous houses, slow tracking shots of pristine but eerie hallways, and a basement that nobody in their right mind would dare investigate, but this being a horror film, naturally, that aspect is thrown out the window. Young Joshua (Jett Klyne) is having a hard time making friends at school and one day, his mother Beth (Keegan Connor Tracy) overhears him talking in his bedroom. When she enters the room, Joshua informs her that his new friend, Z, is playing with him. She smiles and turns a blind eye, knowing that many children create imaginary friends early in their lives. As time goes on, Joshua’s attitude gradually changes from contented to annoyance when Beth refuses to fill up another bowl of cereal for Z or set out an extra plate of dinner for him, telling Joshua he’s taking things too far.
When she asks her husband Kevin (Sean Rogerson) what she should do, he tells her to keep the peace in the house by accommodating Z and that eventually, Joshua will grow out of his imaginary friend phase. One morning, Beth decides to take Joshua out for the day to the local arcade and while watching him play in the crawling tunnel, she glimpses a large, nightmarish-looking creature following him but it disappears as quickly as it appeared. When she gets home, she tries to talk to Kevin, stating that she thinks Z might actually be real and that she saw something at the arcade but he makes fun of her, telling her that she’s taking it all too seriously. She decides to take Joshua to her family therapist, Dr. Seager (Stephen McHattie) and he agrees with Kevin, that Joshua is going through a phase that many kids endure and that he will eventually grow out of it. When she is leaving, Joshua calls out to Z to accompany him and Dr. Seager immediately becomes concerned.
He meets up with Beth shortly thereafter and notifies her that when she was a little girl, the same age as Joshua, she had an imaginary friend, also called Z, who made life hell for her, her sister Jenna (Sara Canning), and her folks. He shows old video footage of her at his office when she was young, stating that she wanted to be with Z forever, and slowly, she begins to remember. Her parents, along with the help of Dr. Seager and medication he prescribed, were able to suppress her memory of Z and allowed her to enjoy the rest of her childhood and teen years but now she realizes Z wants her back and is only using Joshua to get to her. In order to try and save Joshua, she moves him out of the house and in with her sister Jenna and moves back into her recently deceased mother’s old house, where she grew up, in the hopes of distracting Z from her family, all the while trying to formulate a plan to destroy it, once and for all.
While the overall premise of “Z” is intriguing, the film introduces a slew of questions that never get answered. Dr. Seager, at one point, informs Beth that she actually created Z in her own mind, therefore, she has the ability to destroy it but he never tells her how she created it and why she brought it to life. The viewer begins to assume that abuse in Beth’s childhood could be the reason why she created an imaginary friend but it is never discussed or made mention of so in the end, we are never told what Z is, where it came from, how it came to be, and why. Important questions that need answers. If it’s a haunted house, we know it’s a ghost or a poltergeist, if it’s a werewolf or a zombie, they are easily explained, but here, Z is obviously a supernatural presence that only makes itself visible to whomever it wants but again, it is never made clear what it is and how it evolved from nothing.
In spite of these ineffective explanations, or lack thereof, the movie looks incredible. Cinematographer Bradley Stuckel most certainly knows how to set the mood for a scary film. His widescreen and slow-moving tracking shots are a reminder of such classics as “The Omen,” “Alien,” and “The Fury,” to name but a few. Director Brandon Christensen confidently creates an effectively chilling mood throughout, one that reverberates as the movie progresses, I just wish his script was more resolute with its narrative. Keegan Connor Tracy is an actor I have long admired, she first came to my attention in 2003’s “Final Destination 2” as well as “Bates Motel” and “Battlestar Galactica” and here, she infuses her character with futile pathos and untamed desperation as she fiercely tries to save her son’s life, as well as her own. I so badly wanted to like this movie more than I do but when the script omits story elements that are vital to its survival and possible longevity, it is hard to overlook those components.
Available on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD & VOD September 1st
