PAPERHOUSE is an immersive and interesting British horror/fantasy film of the 1980s that has enjoyed some measure of cult success since it was first released nearly 20 years ago. It's certainly an oddball movie, low budget and rather slow-paced, but my advice is to stick with it because it's a journey that does pay off. This is an imaginative tale about a girl who goes on a psychological journey into a make-believe world with some very odd characteristics.It's one of those films which would be spoilt by saying too much about it. The main thing I can say is that this is classic British 'weird' - a genre with a fine literary tradition - and the titular construction is very well realised and memorable. The young cast give naturalistic performances, backed up by old-timers like Ben Cross, and the spooky atmosphere is second to none.

I had my doubts about watching this as I was fearing for another "Bridge to Terabithia" in which I was very disappointed. But I'm very glad I have watched this. Even though it does have its scary moments I would define this much more as a drama movie with fantasy elements rather than horror or thriller. I was really impressed by the acting of both kids Anna and Mark who showed good chemistry. Their relationship was heart-warmingly beautiful even more because they actually never meet in real life only when Anna is sleeping. A drawing coming to life in a dream I did see it before in "Mirrormask". While Mirrormask isn't bad Paperhouse does it much more effective and touching and doesn't add these random things that puzzled me and where I couldn't understand the symbolism of. The ending is bitter-sweet and satisfying. Even though 90 minutes seemed perfect I wouldn't have mind that the movie had been a bit longer (I guess I just wanted more moments between Anna and Mark). It's based on a book, I'm interested in reading it now.

London resident Anna is a preteen girl with a very boring life. She goes to a strict school every day, has very few friends and thinks she's a little old for daydreaming... but when she starts fainting in school she dreams of a lonely little boy her age trapped in the very world she doodled on her notebook in class! She gets sick and, bedridden, has all the time she wants to dream. She's happy to have a new best friend, although her and Marc's relationship starts off badly. They quickly become inseparable, and when she's awake she draws new items for him so he won't get bored.One day she overhears her nurse talking about another patient, who has the same name and description as Marc from Anna's dream world. In the real world he's slowly dying, and Anna plots to rescue him by drawing her estranged father to rescue him... the problem is she draws her father the way he used to be, a confused drunk blinded by booze and unable to reason, so now her dream world has a monster within it. When Marc passes away all of a sudden, Anna is heartbroken... can she ever learn to dream again? Paperhouse is a breathtaking, suspenseful and depressing story, with a boring little girl in a boring world who discovers a talent that gives her a greater purpose in life, the power to connect with the souls of dying people and help them. It was based on a book, the young adult novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. Sadly Elliott Spiers, who played Marc's role, died in 1994 thanks to medication side-effects. Paperhouse has amazing soundtrack, memorable acting and surreal yet strangely beautiful scenery.There is one con; the plot itself is highly similar to the Jodie Foster movie Echoes of a Summer (1976), Never Let Me Go (2010), and the two fiction novels No Place for Eco-Sinners and Coraline. Paperhouse can also drag on in some parts, after all, the main character is bedridden much of the time.Still, Paperhouse deserves a much higher rating than what it has now. Unlike Never Let Me Go (2010), where the main characters grow up with a planned death of forced organ donation, Paperhouse isn't so depressing. It offers hope even after Marc's death, that perhaps he's in a better place, still always protecting Anna. I'm honestly very glad it hasn't been remade because I think it's an excellent film just as it is.Check out Paperhouse, once you get into it, it's a thought-provoking and adventurous, imaginative story.

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.