The thing I love about horror is how mercurial it is. Last year, Adam Egypt Mortimer explored toxic masculinity and the push/pull of male relationships of a certain age through the use of an imaginary friend named Daniel. At the same time, I kept hearing about this other imaginary friend movie that was gaining momentum through festival appearances. Directed by Brandon Christensen from a script he co-wrote with the prolific Colin Minihan, Z takes a similar horror creature to explore motherhood and trauma with a somewhat iffy execution…but its main goal is to scare the shit out of you.

And, reader: It probably will.

Z begins as you’d expect, with the very imaginative and introverted eight-year-old Josh Parson (Jett Klyne) playing by himself in his room. He flies an airplane, supplying the appropriate noise, examines a multi-colored ball under a magnifying glass and watches his toy train run around its track. His parents are loving and caring. There’s the typically work-focused architect father Kevin (Sean Rogerson) who still feels caring and obviously loves Josh, tussling his hair and kindly joking with him. Elizabeth (Keegan Connor Tracy) looks harried, though. With Kevin constantly working, and her mother dying of cancer, you can tell she’s barely holding on.

Josh is inventive and curious, but he’s also very quiet and withdrawn. The introversion increases through the brief sequences of his daily life at school, eating alone, watching kids play from a distance and not paying attention in class. As he scribbles at his desk, his teacher looks on with a look of frustration and disdain. That night, Elizabeth hears Josh talking to someone in his room and watches him playing by himself, but chatting with someone who’s not there. “I think Josh has an imaginary friend,” she tells Kevin. “That’s cute,” he replies.

But Elizabeth isn’t so sure.

At dinner, they set a place set for Josh’s invisible friend, who is finally introduced simply as Z. Kevin this it’s just a stage and so plays along. But Josh is changing. He used to be afraid of the dark but that evening, when Elizabeth tucks him in, Josh tells her to close the door.

“Z likes it dark,” he says.

Then, Josh’s usual ride in the morning doesn’t show up and she has to take him to school. Then the school calls, suspending Josh indefinitely. Turns out they’ve been sending red cards home, documenting the myriad of problems the teacher has been having with Josh. All signed by Kevin, who laughs it off as “kids get into trouble sometimes.”

But soon it becomes apparent that Kevin won’t be able to laugh off Josh’s behavior and the overwhelming presence of his imaginary friend Z.

Z is at its best when it’s buildilng tension. Brandon Christensen (Still/Born) knows how to craft unsettling scenes and starts the crawling creepiness early and subtly. This is a movie I would have loved to have experienced in a theatre because of two particular moments that would have been wild to experience with an audience. An unexpected jump scare literally had me jumping, mouth gleefully agape in shock at the audacity of the moment. Later, a bathtub scene to rival Freddy’s gloved intrusion in A Nightmare on Elm Street sent jolts through me and its uncomfortable imagery lingered in my head for days.

The first act operates as a creepy kid movie, which we’ve seen too much. It works as a gaslighting paranoid thriller, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s also where Z didn’t completely work for me as it was filled with incredibly generic characters who fall into expected, bland roles. Of course the father is never home, even when he is home. Of course he doesn’t believe his wife’s fears about their son. Of course he’ll laugh off the frankly, and concerningly, numerous literal red warning signs from school. If he weren’t so likable and loving with Josh, he’d be insufferable to watch.

But the script smartly knows when to invert expectations and does so as it takes a turn into the second act and wisely moves away from the creepy kid stereotype. As Josh begins drawing the monstrous figure of Z, the reality of the Parsons’ situation becomes dire and Elizabeth is forced to rely on psychiatrist Dr. Seager (Stephen McHattie), who seems to have some insight into Josh’s behavior. And just when this narrative track seems like it’s running out its welcome, the script takes a second turn as it careens into the third act.

Underneath the thrills and unflinching jump scares, Z is, in a way, about parenthood. As we learn more about Elizabeth’s family, we find Elizabeth’s mother Alice (Deborah Ferguson) is dying of cancer and her sister Jenna (Sara Canning) has a conflicted relationship with the family. Their father died when they were younger and the weight of her blood family crushes heavily on Elizabeth. It adds another parental layer and some interesting thematic dynamics that tie into the imaginary friend in intriguing ways. Unfortunately, it isn’t explored as well as I would have liked and I feel that it kind of whiffs the ending.

Iffy third act pacing aside, the thing that sticks in my mind with Z is the tension and the scares. And the bleakness. Watch this one with a good group either while social distancing online or with your quarantine buddies.