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.

*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.

Coming from the same director who'd done and "Immortal Beloved", I'm not surprised it's a good film. Ironically, "Papierhaus" is a movie I'd never heard of until now, yet it must be one of the best movies of the late 80s - partly because that is hands down the worst movie period in recent decades. (Not talking about Iranian or Swedish "cinema" here...) The acting is not brilliant, but merely solid - unlike what some people here claim (they must have dreamt this "wondrous acting", much like Anna). The story is an interesting fantasy that doesn't end in a clever way that ties all the loose ends together neatly. These unanswered questions are probably left there on purpose, leaving it up to the individual's interpretation, and there's nothing wrong with that with a theme such as this. "Pepperhaus" is a somewhat unusual mix of kids' film and horror, with effective use of sounds and music. I like the fact that the central character is not your typical movie-cliché ultra-shy-but-secretly-brilliant social-outcast girl, but a regular, normal kid; very refreshing. I am sick and tired of writers projecting their own misfit-like childhoods into their books and onto the screens, as if anyone cares anymore to watch or read about yet another miserly, lonely childhood, as if that's all there is or as if that kind of character background holds a monopoly on good potential. The scene with Anna and the boy "snogging" (for quite a stretch) was a bit much - evoking feelings of both vague disgust and amusement - considering that she was supposed to be only 11, but predictably it turned out that Burke was 13 or 14 when this was filmed. I have no idea why they didn't upgrade the character's age or get a younger actress. It was quite obvious that Burke isn't that young. Why directors always cast kids older than what they play, hence dilute the realism, I'll never know.

This is one of three 80's movies that I can think of that were sadly overlooked at the time and unfortunately, still overlooked. One of the others was Clownhouse directed by Victor Salva, a movie horribly overlook due to Salva's legal/sexual problems. Another would be Cameron's Closet which strikes me as somewhat underrated--not great, but not nearly as bad as the reviews I've seen. Paper House is well worth your time and I think that it is one of those very quiet films that will just stick in your brain for far longer than you might think. I mean, 10 years after I've seen it and I still give it some pause, whereas something that I might have seen 6 months ago has gone into the ether.