Basically, there are 2 words that summed up why I wanted to see this movie. Stobe Harju. I discovered his talent for making music videos when I fist found out about Poets Of The Fall and I then found out he had a full length movie in the works. So I tried to find it but to no avail except for today when I just happened to come across it and I watched it... I really don't think this movie deserves the hate it's been getting.Thomas Whitman is an aging composer who has nervous breakdowns and he has to use the final moments he has to search through the fantasy world of the mind and piece together the puzzle of what happened. While this is going on his daughter has a distant relationship with him and she gets a visit from the lead singer of the band he used to be in and she tells her that Thomas was a much more caring person then what she perceived him as for most of her life.The visual style of this movie is probably one of the best elements. It's very suitably dream-like. The only movie I can really compare it to in terms of this is MirrorMask, It has that kind of quality to it if you put in a bit of the typical Nightwish style that goes on with their videos.I'm also going to say if you're just getting this movie to listen to Nightwish songs then here's a pro tip... don't. Literally, if you went into this movie wanting to listen to Nightwish then they only make about two, maybe three songs and I am not including how many times I heard a piece of background score that made me think "wait a minute, that sounds like Nightwish" (I haven't listened to the full album yet, I was saving listening to anything for this movie). So, it's basically going to boil down to "Are you okay with so few songs?" and "Do you like the movie regardless?", for me both answer yes but I can see why it won't for others.But aside from that for me everything is standard. I liked almost everything, it just kind of threw me off guard with almost no Nightwish. I may also say the acting from most (if not all) the main players are actually really good. Everything else I might boil it all down to "It's okay".So, I can see why this movie got negative feedback but I for one enjoyed it regardless of whether I heard Nightwish's music or not. It isn't exactly the movie I was expecting but if you keep an open mind and have some pre-determined knowledge of Stobe Harju's career as a music video director then you may like it okay. It might be best however to not really see it as much of a Nightwish film and more of a movie that the band wanted to help make rather then be in.

I've read a lot of fan-love and bitching about the movie. The thing is that I'm no movie expert, and I love it, 'cause the experts seem to think their subjectivity is really objective!The bad: Marianne Farley. Although the movie has little time to introduce the background story, she is keen on making it over-acted, poorly expressed. The good: Most people complain about the film being "a series of scenes that have nothing to do with the actual story". Well, there you have your first wrong, because the film needs to be watched with a creative eye rather than with a critic one. It's a story that invites you to assemble it, you have to really think about it, watch out for the references, mind the paths that make all these different promenades entwine. If few words, you have plenty of Hollywood to leave your brains at the door, not so with Imaginaerum, which complexity isn't just an excuse to present the soundtrack, but an invitation to an artist and a dreamer's mind, in which time and stories are build up with a different logic that in that one found in movies a hollywwodies.Nonetheless, the film has great effects for it's limited budget, it would have been great to give it another half an hour, just to let it stretch on its development.

Imaginaerum is currently my favorite film. I admit this film is pretty confusing as i had to read the plot on wikipedia after i had finished watching the film.I had never heard of the band Nightwish before this film and never knew it was a band till the end of the film. In the film the band do appear in the movie a few times usually performing a song. Imaginareum is an album by Nightwish and they had planned to make a video for every song on the album in the end in turned out into a film.This Film can make you feel several emotions and you may even find yourself shedding a tear at the end, it is a dark dream just like it is described as.I would like to also state the actors in this film are amazing and each gave their own special thing towards acting as the characters. My personal favorite had to be Tom ( aged 10 ) who was played by Quinn Lord he showed great emotions to the different experiences that has happened to him and overall a brilliant young actor. This film is amazing and i cant stop watching it, i would recommend this to pretty much anyone it such a beautiful and dark film

If you don't know the band Nightwish, you can still enjoy this movie. The one thing that comes across, is that is an apologetic homage to the egocentric megalomaniacs that achieve some success in the music industry.The story centering about a daughter dealing with her father slipping away from life, has too much of a tone of "Oh poor me, tortured soul, that no one understands me." And the rest of the characters have to go through hell to accept the apologies of the central character. **Spoiler** Daughter spends 1 hour of the movie bitching about how uncommunicative the father was towards her, and then they find some writings about how much he loved her. WHO THE HECK things that some pages a guy wrote in 5 minutes can make up for maybe 30 years of not caring for her? On top of that she has to spend lengthy hours putting the writings together? This guy should never had children in the first place!Maybe I am biased, because I know too many of these artistic types who get married have kids, but they don't want to sacrifice anything for their children, and at the end they turn up making apologies in movies like these... And most are in the music world and in the movies industry.Armchair psychology aside, I loved the blending of music and imagery. At times it feels like a over extended MTV video (from back when MTV used to play music videos).But someone versed in the arts, often I had the feeling while watching this movie that the guys from Nightwish saw Pink Floyd's The Wall for the first time, and said "Heck! We can do this better... Nightwish style!!"Although I may sound bitter, I enjoyed the imagery and the soundtrack. If you enjoyed this, you should also check out Pink Floyd's The Wall, by Alan Parker, and maybe Jesus Christ Superstar.