That was an excellent one.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

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.

'This looks like a really skill place to play hide and seek,' says our heroine about a deserted railway station at one point. Why don't people talk like that anymore? Troubled youngster Anna Madden (Charlotte Burke) is suffering from persecution at school, feinting fits and a mother who displays some of the most stilted acting in the film. Anna has glandular fever, and miserable and bedridden, she hears from the doctor about another of her patients, a little boy. Bored, she draws the boy inside a house – a picture that, try as she might, she cannot erase. Her addled mind appears to bring the house into reality through her dreams, and there she meets the boy, Mark (Elliot Spears), whose similarities with the doctor's other patient indicate that the dreams of the two children might be shared.Anna's dad (Ben Cross) works away a lot, and this puts a strain on the family. In her dreams, he is a frightening ogre, a scribbled picture (again, one she cannot erase) come nightmarishly true. This leads to many frightening images that blur between reality and dreams.Anna is by turns precocious and affable. Occasionally, her irrational behaviour lapses into juvenile whining (never more so than at the protracted finale, which is otherwise very effective), but Burke never gets as annoying as many more 'saccharin' young leads can be. Ben Cross and Gemma Jones (as Anna's sympathetic doctor) in particular are very credible, as is young Elliot Spears, who tragically died five years later.The imagery is the winner here though. The stark simplicity of Anna's drawings come to life – the featureless, improbable house, a burning, fragmenting landscape and Dad's shadowy, dead-eyed brutality – takes the viewer back to the nightmares of childhood, and the comforting formative world of clean sheets, warm drinks and bed. The swirling, delirious story premise swims from tragedy to child-nightmare to life-affirming, with only occasional moments where the sometimes awkward acting prevents things from becoming as emotionally moving as they might have been. A nicely directed dark fantasy.

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.

I'm glad that this is available on DVD now. This film is an excellent example of the triumph of content & style over empty-headed flashing lights & constant loud noises.Essentially, if you have a short attention span or lack the wit & imagination to engage with literary narrative you won't like this film. The reasons for this are quite simple, but unfortunately rarely achieved: Matthew Jacobs has done a fantastic job of transposing the story of Catherine Storr's novel 'Marianne Dreams' successfully to a screenplay. An unenviable task as anyone who has seen a film of a book will undoubtedly know.The casting is excellent, allowing director Bernard Rose to use the actors in a way that is rarely seen now; they indulge in the craft of acting! I know, I know, actors doing their job & acting instead of resorting to mugging inanely at the camera lens whist a kaleidoscope of car chases, explosions & fire fights break out around them is a genuinely rare treat, but it does actually happen in this film.This brings me to the final reason that this is a film for the imaginative thinker & not the spoon-fed tabloid reader - Apart from a solid script, direction & acting, it relies on atmosphere, suspense & implied horror. If it is to be categorized as horror then the presentation of 'Paper House' is more in the vein of Sophocles than Tobe Hooper.In conclusion then, if you like lots of loud noises, explosions, constant cuts, & bright flashing colours you'd be better off watching 'Transformers', but if you like a suspenseful story which unfolds through a skillful & evocative use of narrative without insulting your intelligence by force feeding you cacophonous nonsense then this might just be your thing.