SYNOPSIS

On the fog-shrouded coast of Morro Bay, Gabriel is doing his best to raise his nine-year-old adopted son alone. Harry is fragile, withdrawn, and fiercely attached to his imaginary friend, a girl named Isobel. At first, Gabriel treats Isobel as a (mostly) harmless coping mechanism. But soon, Harry’s behavior turns darker… violent outbursts at school, chilling threats at home, and unsettling drawings of Isobel that bear an uncanny resemblance to Emilia Cruz, the latest in a string of local girls who have mysteriously gone missing.

As the tension escalates, Gabriel finds himself under scrutiny. Neighbors whisper. Harry’s teacher, Jenna, questions his stability and his fitness as a queer single father, while Helena, Harry’s therapist, grows increasingly unsettled by his drawings and talk of Isobel. Even Roman, a new relationship offering Gabriel fleeting moments of hope, begins to see the cracks. As Harry’s behavior grows more erratic and openly threatening, suspicion around Gabriel mounts… fed by the quiet prejudice that a queer man is unfit to raise a child alone.

Gabriel clings to the belief that Harry is simply troubled… but he can’t shake the fear that Isobel may be more than imaginary. The spiral reaches its breaking point when a body washes up on the beach. As police cordon off the shoreline, Harry… overwhelmed by panic and rage… breaks through the crowd. Officers try to restrain him, but he slips past, runs to the covered body, and rips back the tarp. As he reveals the dead girl, he lets out a high, broken scream as he turns to his father. What did you do to her? What did you do?

The Imaginary Friend is an elevated psychological horror with supernatural undertones, keeping its audience in the unsettling space between trauma and possession in the vein of Bring Her Back and Hereditary. It explores the question of whether a nine-year-old can be a psychopath, confronting the limits of empathy, the fragility of parental love, and the most terrifying question of all: who is the monster? Isobel? Harry? Or is it Gabriel himself?