Paperhouse – 1988 | 92 mins | Drama, Fantasy, Horror | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Bernard Rose’s striking debut was loosely based on a children’s novel by Catherine Starr called Marianna Dreams, it tells of a girl whose drawings appear to influence reality. The novel had already served as the basis for a successful ATV children’s series in 1972. Matthew Jacobs’ intelligent script manages to bridge the divide between supernatural horror and psychological drama, whilst maintaining naturalistic characters. The production design succeeds in turning childish sketches into hauntingly bleak landscapes with danger lurking within. Charlotte Burke is annoying as the child and difficult to sympathise with, but she deals with the emotional role convincingly. Glenne Headly is hampered by a post-filming decision to make her erstwhile American character English, while Ben Cross is almost comatose and never makes Anna’s father anything more than a periphery figure.

11-year-old Anna (Charlotte Burke) has become a discipline problem at school, due to emotional disturbances at home and an estranged father. She begins suffering fainting spells, and during a long stay in bed recovering, Anna does an awful lot of drawing. She discovers that when she dreams she can enter a house that she has drawn onto paper. As she embellishes the drawing, the imaginary house alters too.

Anna attempts to enter the house whilst in a dream-like state, but it’s empty, so she draws a small boy at the window, Marc(Elliott Spiers). When she next to her dreams, the boy is indeed there, in an upstairs bedroom, but he’s unable to walk. Anna’s fantasy and Freudian dream world collide when she discovers that her doctor, Sarah Nicols (Gemma Jones), has a patient called Marc suffering muscular-dystrophy. Anna’s dream soon turns to nightmare when she draws her father with an angry face, and he enters her dreams as a blind bogeyman brandishing a hammer.