Film Review: 'Paperhouse' (1988), by Bernard Rose

in #film5 years ago (edited)

Paperhouse (1988), directed by Bernard Rose from a script by Matthew Jacobs, based on the book Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. Starring Ben Cross, Glenne Headley, Charlotte Burke, Gemma Jones, and Elliot Spiers.

Anna (Charlotte Burke) is a bratty eleven-year-old British girl who often gets in trouble at school. Her father (Ben Cross) is away working on oil projects around the world and Mum (Glenne Headley) can’t cope with being essentially a single parent. Anna is angry that Dad is away so much, but she can’t really put her anger into words.

Then Anna starts having unexplained fainting spells. While unconscious, she experiences a type of lucid dreaming, in which she finds a strange house in an isolated field. The house looks just like one she drew in class, with skewed lines and tilted, odd-sized windows. When she later draws a face in one of the upper windows, a boy appears in the window and talks to her from it. She wants to visit him inside, but he explains that there’s no stairs in the house to his room. She draws stairs inside the house when she wakes up, and the next time she has a fainting spell, she finds she is able to climb to the boy’s room and visit him. He tells her his name is Marc (played by Elliot Spiers) and he can’t walk because his legs are paralyzed.

As the story unfolds, Anna draws more things so that Marc can have toys and food, although occasionally she screws up. For instance, she draws him with a pair of working legs, hoping it will allow him to walk, but that doesn’t work. She draws him a funky soft-serve ice cream machine, but forgets to add cups or cones or spoons, so he can’t eat it. (She also draws him plenty of other food treats to eat, but she doesn’t draw a toilet so he can expel the waste from his food. This issue isn’t addressed in the film, but it hangs over those scenes like a big cartoonish question mark.)

One day, in the awake world, Anna develops a high fever and is sent to bed. A visiting doctor named Sarah Nichols (Gemma Jones) diagnoses Anna as having “glandular fever,” which Americans know as mononucleosis. Anna must stay in bed for at least a month; she continues to draw and pass out, visiting the boy in the strange house regularly.

During Dr. Nichols’s checkup visits, Anna learns of another patient that the doctor treats at home: a boy her age named Marc, who is bedridden and crippled with muscular dystrophy. Anna starts to believe that she’s been communicating somehow with the real Marc subconsciously in the strange, dream house.

Things get scary when Anna draws her father into the house scene, but she messes up and scratches out his face. The next time she visits the house, her father is an angry, blind monster who stalks and threatens Marc and Anna, bringing on a creepy, suspenseful climax.

Headley (Tess Trueheart in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy) puts on a British accent to play Anna’s weary and lonely mother. Both child actors are very good; sadly Burke didn’t pursue an acting career after this one credit, and Spiers died only a few years after Paperhouse was released. Bernard Rose is the director of the excellent 90s horror film, Candyman, starring the great Tony Todd.

The fantasy scenes are well done and don’t shriek “primitive 80s CGI.” In fact, this film, though more than thirty years old, doesn’t seem dated at all. It’s a dark, poignant child’s fable about friendship, loss, and redemption that appeals to children and adults alike. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime, free to members.

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Oh man, do I ever love this movie! It was one of my earlier Lase-O-Rama write-ups here. :)

Your review is much more detailed and complete than mine. Good job! I did not know of this movie myself, until a couple of years ago when I got a recommendation from some movie message board (probably the late, lamented IMDb message boards). I thought Glenne Headley did a good job with her British accent and did not notice the dubbing, but then I was also too wrapped up in the story to notice.

I agree that there are unanswered questions, but they don't detract from enjoying the movie. One is the toilet question -- sorry, but it really bothered me when I saw those giant bottles of Coke she drew for him. What did he do after finishing those bottles? The other more serious question is why she never tried to contact the real Marc directly, by sending a note with the doctor? Did the real Marc even know she was communicating with him in the Paperhouse?

PS -- did you know that Movie Chat imported the IMDb message boards? If there are gems you wrote years ago on those boards and didn't save, you can retrieve them! Unfortunately, not many people know about Movie Chat, so it's not nearly as lively as the old IMDb boards were.

What did he do after finishing those bottles?

He's a guy. I imagine he unzipped, hung it out the window, and watered the lawn. ;)

I'd never heard of Paperhouse until I ran across the LaserDisc, but it's such a ridiculously well done horror-fantasy. Headley did a wonderful job with her accent, I just think it's unfortunate she had to come back in and re-dub all her lines, although I'm sure she got paid for it, so maybe she didn't complain. :)

I'm pretty sure there aren't any of my gems on the IDMb message boards, because I posted so infrequently. I was a monstrous lurker though, and loved to scroll through threads on my favorite movies, looking for some cool fan theories or explanations about what happened. That's really awesome to see they've been archived somewhere though! I've got a new bookmark. :)

Another good read thanks janenightshade. Your clear style holds my attention and awakes my interest.
This is a good critic's job - to lure people into watching movies that are not what is their 'usual' genre.

Hello @janenightshade, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!

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