There is a moment at the very beginning of Imposters where I leaned forward in my seat, ready to lock in. The opening carries a quiet, unsettling tone that immediately reminded me of Frailty, which is high praise considering how wildly underrated that film still is. That initial mood promises something intimate, sinister, and emotionally raw. Unfortunately, Imposters struggles to fully capitalize on that promise.
Written and directed by Caleb Phillips in his feature debut, Imposters is a lo-fi sci-fi thriller that hinges on grief, denial, and the terrifying lengths people will go to when they refuse to accept loss. After a couple’s baby is taken, the mother discovers a possible way to bring him back, while the father begins to suspect the returned child may not be who she believes he is. It is a strong hook. It just takes far too long to do anything interesting with it.
Charlie Barnett plays Paul, and his performance is one of the film’s biggest hurdles. He often feels emotionally disconnected from the material, which is frustrating given how heightened the situation is supposed to be. As a parent myself, I expected this film to hit harder on a personal level, but Barnett’s restraint sometimes comes across less as internalized grief and more as flat affect. It pulled me out more than once.
Bates Wilder’s Orson is another puzzling element. The performance wavers between portraying Orson as possibly neurodivergent and presenting him as fully typical, without the script ever clarifying the intent. That inconsistency makes the character feel underdeveloped instead of mysterious, and in a film that relies so heavily on unease, that lack of clarity hurts tension rather than helping it.
Jessica Rothe, on the other hand, absolutely carries this thing on her back. Her performance is the saving grace of Imposters and, honestly, the main reason the film remains watchable. She taps into that desperate, unrelenting maternal grief with conviction, grounding even the film’s weaker stretches in something emotionally real. The passion of a mother protecting her child, or believing she is, becomes the strongest thematic throughline, and Rothe sells it.
Visually, the film does decent work with very limited resources. The small cast and few locations are used efficiently, even if the movie occasionally feels boxed in by its own minimalism. If I had to guess, the film was shot in Georgia. The wooded roads and rural outskirts closely resemble the parts of northern Florida and Georgia I have driven through myself. That setting works well enough, lending the film a muted, sunbaked isolation.
The makeup and practical effects deserve a nod. When the film finally leans into its sci-fi and horror elements, particularly in the final stretch, the shock value lands. There is a fun backrooms-adjacent concept buried in here, one that hints at a darker mythology the film never quite has the time or courage to explore fully.
Pacing is where Imposters really falters. The movie takes an extremely long time to get going, and even when it does, it often feels like it is circling the same emotional beats without advancing the story. I nearly dozed off more times than I care to admit, which is wild because I honestly cannot remember the last time I almost fell asleep in a theater. It is not until the final twenty minutes that the film finally finds its pulse.
When it gets there, though, it does stick the landing. The ending works. It clarifies the film’s intentions and delivers something genuinely unsettling. There is an appreciation to be had for that final destination, even if the journey getting there is uneven and far too slow.
It is hard to root for anyone in Imposters, which feels intentional but still makes the experience emotionally distant. The film often feels like a lesser version of better movies you have already seen. At times, it plays like the cinematic embodiment of that meme: “Mom, can we watch Coherence?” “No, son, we have Coherence at home.” And the image is Imposters.
Still, there is real ambition here. For a feature debut, Phillips shows flashes of an audacious voice willing to sit with discomfort and moral rot. Imposters is dark, occasionally gripping, and once it finally gets moving, it becomes a tense ride. It just asks too much patience to reach that point.
If you are going to watch Imposters, go in for Jessica Rothe and stay for the ending. Just know you may spend most of the runtime waiting for the film to become the movie it clearly wants to be.
Jessie Hobson