Finfrosk86 Heard of this through a list over under-appreciated movies, I think it was, and after reading about it, I had to check it out. Now, I wish it had actually been really good, but I was not convinced.The story is good, though. I found it interesting, and the movie definitely has some strengths. Unfortunately it has a good deal of weaknesses too.First thing that comes to mind is the mothers acting. It is horrible. The main kid (girl) is pretty good though, also the other kid does alright. Another thing that was very obvious was the bad lip syncing. It is way off in some places. Especially the mothers dialogue. Several times words are spoken, but her mouth is shut, and vice versa.(also, haha, weird thing: apparently, in 1988 UK it was OK to hit bitch- slap children)The movie in general also reminded me of something that could have been shown on television, for children. (think Barne-TV, if there are any Norwegians reading this) "Barne-tv" back in the day, was a half hour with different shows for kids, sometimes there were mini series. Paperhouse gave me that vibe.It didn't scare me, although there is this kind of creepy atmosphere at times. I also liked some of the visuals, like the dream world, it's pretty simple, but it works. One jump scare also got to me.Paperhouse is super uneven, and some of the dramatic parts just did not work for me, at all. Towards the end I was a little like: Is this gonna end soon? At the same time, there are really good parts too. I wished it would have known a little better what it wanted to be, because it's kind of all over the place.Had I seen it as a child, so that I would have had some nostalgic connection to it, I would probably have liked it a lot better.Someone should remake this, with tighter direction, and a lot more on the horror side. That would be awesome.

debbiekirk24 I am very surprised at the enthusiasm of other reviewers. I remember Escape Into Night from the early 70s very well and this film is nothing like it. I have not read Catherine Storr's book Marianne Dreams, but all the preamble at the school and Anna arguing with her mother is a waste of time. The acting is atrocious. I am not surprised to read that Charlotte Burke did not make another film and I can't believe that she got an award for this film. She makes you realise just how talented Dakota Fanning and Lynsey Lohan were as children. Glenne Hedley, so brilliant and captivating in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (made the same year), is dreadful in this film and I know that she can do so much better. Even established actress Gemma Jones gives a wooden performance. This is turgid, pointless and has succeeded in tainting my great memories of Escape Into Night.

Eumenides_0 Young Anna (Charlotte Burke) leads a lonely life: her mother (Glenne Headly) works all day and her father (Ben Cross) is working abroad; Anna doesn't get along at school, starting fights with classmates and teachers. To make matters worse, she starts having dizzy spells on her birthday, and in dreams she travels to a house she has control over through her drawings.This is the premise of Paperhouse, a movie by Bernard Rose, based on a novel by Catherine Storr, and which belongs to that persistent subgenre of movies about troubled children who mix their fantasy worlds with their real frustrations and problems; in recent years it has given us Where The Wild Things Are and Pan's Labyrinth and has been going on since Victor Fleming decided Dorothy didn't actually visit Oz but dreamed it up instead.Remarkably Paperhouse takes less inspiration from The Wizard of Oz and more from Roman Polanski's Repulsion, like in the feeling of loneliness, or using the father figure as a source of fear there's a tense sequence in which Anna's father comes into her dream to kill her with a hammer. The movie, however, brings nothing new to this fantasy subgenre.The movie has some storytelling problems. In one of the subplots Anna learns from her nurse the story of Marc (Elliott Spiers), a boy who can't walk and is dying. Anna, without knowing his look or anything about him, promptly imagines him and several details of his past in her dreams that turn out to be real. How she does that is never explained and the movie never decides whether it's trying to be a supernatural thriller or just the wild imagination of a sickly child. In fact this movie suffers from trying to be too many things at the same time: a horror movie, a love story, a family drama – so that it always falls short of successfully being anything at all.In spite of that there's a good emotional story somewhere in the movie, as Anna believes that through her drawings she can change Marc's fate. Everything that she draws happens in the dreams, so she draws Marc a pair of new legs, only to see them turning to dust. The moral is very simple: you can't change reality to your whim; growing up is accepting things as painfully as they are.Visually the movie is quite good – it's always fun to see how Anna's drawings change her fantasy world; at first she just sees it as a house surrounded by Stonehenge-like rocks in a deserted landscape, but then she draws the trees, the interior rooms, stairs and objects to fill the house with. Considering the movie clearly didn't have many resources to dispose of, the crew did a fine job making the house familiar but also otherworldly.Glenne Headly and the under-appreciated Ben Cross give good performances here, but the movie belongs to Elliott Spiers and Charlotte Burke, who strangely never made a movie again. People tend to despise child actors, but the two practically carry the movie with their chemistry and genuine feeling.A note must go to the music by Hans Zimmer. His career was just starting when he composed the score for Paperhouse and the style is similar to Rain Man and Black Rain, two of my favourite scores by him. People who only know Zimmer from his loud, synth-heavy modern style (which I also love) would be surprised to see the elegant and melancholy music he composed here.All in all, Paperhouse should leave anyone looking for a good time satisfied. The movie has a fast pace and ends before the viewer knows it, leaving him marvelled with occasional flashes of visual creativity, solid performance and a heartbreaking finale.

hazells518 *SPOILERS** Probably everywhere!... Quirky little film but for once I was grateful for other reviews which helpfully teased out niggling questions raised. One could take it at face value as a psychologic/horror thriller or elect to pick it apart by analysing each scene - but I don't think I'll bother. Thank goodness for DVDs where you can re-run scenes to catch action or dialogue you missed - which at least managed to defer my opinion that this one had totally sunk in the mire. It did have some redeeming features. Both children carried the film, however played by much older actors than the children they were meant to portray. The characters of the 2 adults and their performances were weak as dishwater. I didn't even recognise it was Ben Cross until halfway into the film! Gemma Jones, bless 'er, redeemed it by being normal and as always was the most professional. The boy Elliot and the female lead Charlotte Burke actually did a good job, but as 'Anna' she became intensely irritating after a while. Burke's general deadpan expression did nothing to make her sympathetic and was especially grating when she was continually rude and demanding to the grown-ups who took the unexpected treatment meekly. What was this child's true angst - Daddy simply being away? Did I miss some explanation of why? Glenne Headley as the mother was completely miscast and you can see when they are having soup in her room that her voice is dubbed (although apparently it is by the same actress having to disguise a North American accent). While you could empathise somewhat with the fruition of Anna's drawings in her feverish dreams, when awake she didn't seem to think the results of her scribblings were in any way odd. She seemed too selfish to ultimately care about the boy in the dream house. What on earth was the greenish gloop being dispensed from a machine in the hallway of the paperhouse? Ice cream? The interior of the flat (representing a London council or housing association block no doubt- from the rickety old lift and the mansion finish outside) seemed far too modern and "chi chi". And what was with the weird wall mounted "radio" in the house on the hill - looked a bit too techno even for Anna to draw? The later snogging episode was totally inappropriate and unnecessary.***GOOFS*** Blink and you miss it! Once again we have X-rays in a hospital hanging on a lighted viewing box behind the nurse's head displayed the WRONG WAY ROUND. No doctor or health professional would look at them that way but it happens in film after film with monotonous regularity, almost too often for logical statistical probability. 'Though credits frequently list medical 'advisors' not one of them ever seems to catch these glaringly obvious errors! NB: Normally chest Xrays are viewed the same way as if you were facing the subject - ie: the heart shadow on the (seeming) RT hand side of the viewed piece of film. Plus, here we are in a Children's ward yet the images shown are of Adult chests which in itself is ridiculous. There is also a single view of an adult forearm hanging on another viewbox with no sign of the 2ndary image(usually a lateral view) anywhere. Both of the chest X- rays are clearly out of some X-ray department's box of embarrassing rejects. Each one is useless diagnostically as the lung bases of the left side of the chest are 'cut off' (in Radiology parlance) and the second image is 'underpenetrated'. Light boxes equally should not stay on all the time due to glare and heat.