Had it not been for viewer intervention, I likely wouldn’t have seen 1988’s ‘Paperhouse’. It’s one of those movies that falls off my radar in terms of content and style when I’m looking for stuff to cover on the show. The DVD box and poster are fairly well polished and unassuming. It looks like another generic studio release that maybe didn’t quite embed itself into the cultural psyche and fell through the cracks. If I’d seen this in a shop, I wouldn’t have given it a second look. But I found myself with a gap in the schedules when planning for the season this year, just as a helpful viewer recommended this saying they’d be fascinated to see what I made of it.

I try to do rec’s where I can, but I’ve always caveated it by adding that I work on my reviews well in advance and that it may take quite a while before I get round to covering requests. So it’s been a HELL of a long time since this one came in, and if that helpful viewer, whoever they were, is still around. I just wanna say thanks. It was very much appreciated.

So! Paperhouse, a 1988 fantasy drama movie. And I’m SO glad I had at least a cursory glance at this film before I watched it, because this is one of those movies that’s been repeatedly mismarketed over the years. It’s often sold as a horror film, and had I gone into this with the expectation that it was going to BE a horror movie, I’d have likely been woefully underwhelmed. While there are a *couple* of horror elements in the 2nd and 3rd acts it absolutely isn’t a horror film in that sense.

The film follows Anna, a daydreamy ‘Tracy Beaker’ sort who’s stuck at that awkward age where they’re not quite a kid, not quite a teenager and misunderstood by almost everyone around her. She’s bullied in school and her Dad is currently out of the picture working abroad. In the opening of the film we see Anna at school crudely drawing what appears to be a house in her notebook. After a bully tries to get a rise out of her, Anna retaliates and her teacher sends her out of the class, but Anna refuses to comply so her teacher adds a detention to the punishment before sending Anna out.

She continues to disrupt the class from outside and the teacher comes out to scold Anna who tries to explain that it’s her birthday and that she’s feeling unwell to get some sympathy, the teachers having none of it though and heads back inside. It then turns out that Anna was telling the truth about feeling unwell as she passes out and wakes up in a field. Off in the distance is a strange looking house which she starts heading towards, but before she can get there, she wakes up back at the school surrounded by her classmates and the teacher who sends her to the nurses office.

Anna’s mum arrives at the school and the pair head home, while driving back Anna’s mum is clearly quite stressed and tells Anna they’re going to the doctors office and that her birthday present of a riding lesson may have to be cancelled. Anna STRONGLY protests, but her mum says it’ll all depend on what the doctors say, so Anna tells her mum that she faked being sick because she didn’t want to have detention on her birthday, so her mum takes her back to school, causing even more protest.
Anna’s having none of this though, and as soon as she’s dropped back at the school, she sneaks off, grabs her friend Karen and the pair head to an abandoned train station to bob off school. They *attempt* to put makeup on and chat about snogging boys and other things. Anna asks Karen if she wants to play hide and seek but Karen says she’s too old for it. After making a friendly wager though, Karen accepts and Anna runs into an abandoned train tunnel and almost immediately passes out again, waking up back in the field near her dream house. She manages to get to it this time, but there’s no way in. She’s found by the police several hours later and taken back to her house where her mum has been worried sick.

Anna winds up needing a doctor, who advises that Anna stay in bed for a couple of days to recover. She’s upset that she’s basically bedbound, but uses the opportunity to continue working on her house drawing. She adds a lot more detail, including a little man in the window, but she accidentally gives him a frown. She tries to erase it but for some reason he won’t rub away. That night when Anna goes to sleep, she wakes up in the field by the house again and tries shouting to see if anyones there. A boy opens the window and shouts down to her to tell her that he can’t let her into the house because the house has no stairs. He’s basically stuck on the second floor.

Anna wakes up in the middle of the night with a fever. But also comes to the realisation that the house and fields in her dream are almost exactly the same as the house in her drawings. As such, to test the theory, she stays up all night adding even more detail to the paper house including a staircase. She finishes by daybreak and heads back to bed and this time in her dream, she can get into the house and lo and behold there IS a staircase now. She heads upstairs where she finds the boy sat alone in an empty room, his name’s Mark. She tries to explain to him that this is a dream and that he isn’t real but he doesn’t seem too happy about that. So in an attempt to change the subject, Anna asks Mark if he wants to go and explore, but he bluntly tells her he can’t, because he can’t walk.

Later that night, Anna wakes up and chats to her mum about her Dad (who apparently had a problem with drink for a time) she also asks her mum about her dreams. Her mum tries to reassure her that while dreams can scare her, they can never hurt her. Later that day, the doctor returns and confirms that Anna has Glandular fever, and that she’ll be out of action for a few weeks at least. Anna has a moan to the doctor, who mentions in passing that she should be lucky as one of her patients is a boy who’s been in bed for almost a year. Anna seems intrigued, but the doctor’s not particularly keen to discuss it.

As time goes by Anna begins to add more and more detail to the paperhouse, which is then reflected in the dream version of the house. Everything from mountains of burgers, to oversized oranges and giant radios. Anna and Mark begin to get to know each other better and the pair start to open up to each other. Anna even goes as far as adding her dad to the drawing, she doesn’t quite get him right though and crosses him out. Her mum gets to see the drawings after a time, but she mildly critiques it, causing Anna to basically scribble over the whole thing and throw it next to the bin before heading to take a bath.

While gone though, her mum cleans Anna’s room, including putting the drawing in the bin. Anna ends up falling asleep in the bath where she has a nightmare about her dad and that night, when Anna goes to sleep, she doesn’t dream. The doctor comes back the next day with medication for her, but she seems really out of sorts. As she’s leaving, Anna’s mum corners her by the door and asks if everythings alright. Anna sneaks in and overhears that the boy the doctor spoke about is very ill with muscular dystrophy and has recently had a relapse due to a chest infection.

Things aren’t looking good for him and this terrifies Anna who believes that her destroying the paper house last night has directly led to the boy’s deterioration. She starts believing that the boy is in fact, Mark. After tearing her room apart, Anna realises that the drawing must be in the rubbish, and it’s GARBAGE DAY. so she races out of the house closely followed by her mum and begs the bin men to let her go through the entire block of flats rubbish to try and find her drawing. Her mums very reluctant, but when she sees how much it means to Anna, she joins in.

They eventually manage to find the drawing. It’s stained and a bit tatty, but all in one piece. She heads back inside and it turns out the medication she’s been given are sleeping tablets. As such, she almost immediately passes out and wakes up back in the dream world. Only, this time the inside of the paperhouse is grotty, stained and damaged. All the nice things Anna drew are smashed and mangled and Mark is looking quite tired. Anna explains that he’s currently in the hospital and not doing so good, and it’s revealed that the sleeping tablets are preventing Anna from waking up. She appears to be briefly trapped in her dream. She looks out a nearby window…and she sees her dad stood in the field draped in shadows.

And…I can’t really tell you much more from here on in as we’d start getting into hard spoiler territory, needless to say the story is FAR from over, with Anna having to traverse both her increasing illness and the strange and scary world of her own creation. In a rip roaring 80(ish) minutes of adventure, mystery and melancholy. Will Anna be able to save Mark? Is Anna’s dad all that he seems!? And Will Anna’s mum stay true to her promise and take Anna to the seaside when she’s better? All this and more will be answered if you check out, ‘Paperhouse’.

And honestly, colour me impressed. The scripts nothing short of exemplary. With an ultra tight 3 act structure that transitions seamlessly from act to act, it’s mindful on pacing, slowing down just enough when it needs the audience to take stock and absorb what’s happening, but also not being afraid to open the flood gates and go full tilt when it wants to feel a bit more chaotic. It allows the narrative to really get to breathe easy across the runtime and I think it manages to balance the drama of the real world elements with the more fantastical elements of the dream world decently as a result.

Both worlds cross between each other fairly seamlessly as well, it never feels like we’re in a dream portion that feels forced. Or a real world section that’s there just for padding’s sake. I would argue it was probably one of the better examples of the “Real world influencing a fantasy world” type movie that i’ve seen and it reminded me very heavily of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ for its ability to duel wield these two different drama driven aspects with equal care and attention to such an extent that I didn’t feel either side of the drama had been neglected in creating a wonderfully crafted narrative.

Even the character structuring appears to have had thought and attention put to it, I like the fact that this script makes all of its characters flawed in one way or another, and that those flaws don’t necessarily drive the characters in a positive way. There are no ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’ in this picture. There’s just complex characters who have their hang ups just like anyone else. In particular the fact that they make Anna problematic, to me is a nice touch. She’s not this innocent little girl being put into more mature situations like ‘Celia’. Anna lies, she can be irritating, manipulative to a point, she can be aggressive, even a little vulgar at times. And the script uses that in tandem with its dream world scape to help create a script that’s almost as driven by our characters motivations alone as it is driven by the need to necessitate plot progression. Which is quite rare to see.

I also like the fact that this film doesn’t infantilize its characters or situations too much. The scenes early on in the film where Anna and her friend put makeup on and talk about snogging boys almost instantly helps to crystalise exactly who these characters are, where they are developmentally and what this films main drive is going to be about. It establishes that these are preteens who are in that awkward period of life where they’re learning about relationships, adult themes and the real world. But they’re not yet mature enough to have had the worldly wisdom of that. They’re viewing maturity through kids eyes still. Which I feel throughout this film is again handled with great craft and care, but more importantly REALLY helps to drive the symbolic nature of this production.

The paperhouse, from my understanding here is a representation of Anna’s sense of isolation and feeling of being misunderstood. Anna is alone in the world of this film. She has her mum who’s probably the closest to someone who understands her, but no one really ‘gets’ her, or if they think they do, it’s only on a surface level interpretation. The paperhouse is a manifestation of that loneliness and uncertainty around life and coming of age. In the beginning, it’s this big ominous building that’s impenetrable. Its effectively walled off by her because she doesn’t know how to deal with it, but slowly with the introduction of Mark (symbolism here not only of her growing sense of hope for a brighter future, but possibly a symbolic representation of her own growing interest in the opposite sex) the paperhouse begins to prosper, she adds more things to it, representation of her opening up and unmasking from her previous detachment and embracing who she is, with food, music and the interesting contraptions that she creates.

When her mum dismisses her drawings, it’s a step further than just her saying her pictures are bad. She’s basically critiquing Anna’s only output of growth for her as a person, which is why she reacts so negatively and attempts to throw away the paperhouse. She’d developed herself through the house and with her mum’s dismissal, she felt the need to reject the person she’d built into and put the walls back up.

Even her issues with her dad are represented in the paperhouse world, and through this fantasy play she’s able to get her head into a space where she’s ultimately able to resolve her issues and begin to reset the damaged foundations she had with her father. The paperhouse is basically Anna’s way of both trying to cope with her feelings of isolation and her way of attempting to grow past the issues that have held her back as a kid, it shapes her view on friendship, love, compassion and caring. And I think it’s handled phenomenally well here.

And that’s not even mentioning the dialogue, which again is just perfect here. We have incredibly fluid and naturalistic lines that feel very real for the time this film was set. There’s a lot of key plot points mentioned in passing, but also a decent amount of idle chatter mixed in as well. Everything reads almost like actual real world conversations. And I really love that in this film because it makes everything feel about ten times more emotive than it would have had they gone for standard cinematic scripting or improvisation. It’s honestly delightful.

In fact; I only have ONE issue with this script. ONE thing that prevents it from being pretty much perfect. And spoilers are gonna be dropped for a bit here, so if you’d rather avoid them, please skip to the next chapter on this video. But…the ending of this film bothered me. So, for some quick context. At the end of the film Anna and her family are reunited and they all decide to head out to the seaside to try and put things behind them. Prior to this happening, Anna and Mark pretty much declared their feelings for each other and had their first kiss. While sitting on the edge of a cliff face, the pair decide it would be lovely to go down to the sand on the beach and get close to the sea. Mark says he’s going to go and draw the pair a helicopter so they can fly down to the sand. And he runs off to a nearby lighthouse, promising to return with a helicopter shortly.

When Anna wakes up, she finds out that Mark sadly died as a result of his illness. The family arrive at the seaside and check into a hotel, Anna’s dad comes in for a heart to heart and opens the curtains in her bedroom, which leaves Anna speechless as directly outside her window, is the EXACT lighthouse from her dream. She immediately runs outside and heads up to the lighthouse, furiously banging on the door and screaming for Mark to let her in. but there’s no answer.

Realising that he’s actually properly gone. She slumps to the steps of the lighthouse, thoroughly depressed. But, on instinct lifts a rock next to the lighthouse door, revealing a piece of paper. It’s a note and drawing from Mark. He explains that he hovered around the lighthouse for hours, but when Anna didn’t turn up, he had to go. He reassures her though not to worry, because he’ll be back for her soon.

Anna wanders over to a sheer cliff face, and looks down at the crashing waves deeply upset. When, out of nowhere, a helicopter silently flies overhead, its mark. He opens the door of the helicopter and drops a ladder down for Anna to grab onto. She tries to reach out over the cliff face for it, but he isn’t getting close enough. Mark starts shouting for her to get back from the edge of the cliff and slowly Mark’s voice starts mixing with Anna’s mums. Just as Annas about to grab the ladder, her mum snatches her away from the cliff face. Mark speeds off and Anna is left embracing her family by the cliffside saying that everythings probably going to be alright from now on, crossfading to crashing waves and the clifff tops. End credits.

Now. Where I have issue with this is the last 2 minutes or so. To me? They had the PERFECT bleak ending RIGHT THERE. They have Anna go to the cliff face, they do the ladder sequence. They have the mixing of Mark and Annas mums voices. THEN they crossfade to the crashing ocean waves and end credits. With the implication being, symbolically, that Anna really DID ‘Get on the helicopter’. She gets to be with Mark forever in the dream world. FUCKING BLEAK, but at the same time a VERY fitting and poignant ending to a film thats heavily been steeped in symbolism.

Instead, we have a ‘nick of time’ rescue and a happy ending stapled on to this thing, and I feel it kind of undercuts the poignancy of the piece and ultimately, felt a bit like it went against its own coded messaging. Whether that was studio intervention or just how the book ends I don’t know. But it reminded me a bit of the way the universal version of ‘Frankenstein’ ends with a weird upbeat ‘Everything is great!’ wedding sequence mere moments after a hoard of angry villagers burn a windmill and the creature to the ground. It just felt very tonally out of place to me. It’s a shame honestly, as had they stuck the landing. This probably would have been the finest script I’ve seen in 15 years. Easy. As it stands it’s still pretty bloody spectacular, but it JUST falls short in my opinion.

The script was based on a novel by Catherine Storr and was adapted here by Matthew Jacobs, Who has 27 writing credits with his last in 2014. Of note, he wrote a number of episodes of “The Adventure of young Indiana Jones”, the original story for “The Emperor’s New Groove” and most importantly of all, the guy wrote the script for the 90’s “Doctor Who TV Movie! Yeh, the Paul Mcgann one. Wild isn’t it?

On directing duties, we have Bernard Rose. He has 33 credits spanning a 45+ year career with highlights including “Candyman” and some of the most iconic music videos of the 1980’s including the “Relax” music video “Small town boy” and “Red Red Wine”.

And on the direction front, again. This thing really can’t be flawed. We have an incredibly stylish production here that manages to tie all of the elements of production together into a gorgeous package that feels distinct, stylish and vivid in it’s creation. Rose has managed to work closely with the cinematographers and lighting teams to create some really striking set pieces that are only enhanced by his work with the set designers.

Here the sets are rich in detail, they feel lived in, you get the sense that you know Anna fairly well from just how her room is, you get a sense of her mum’s world from their family home setup. The paperhouse is able to leave a clear tonal “tell” simply by the way its built, looks and feels. And with Bernard’s hand on the direction we have a practically faultless play here that gives the audience exactly what they need, nothing more, nothing less.

Direction of the cast too is also pretty rock solid. You’ve got to imagine, we spend most of the film with child actors, most of whom were first time performers. And Bernard has clearly worked VERY closely and considerately with them to get their absolute best. As cited by the actress who played Anna saying that the filming of this production was some of the happiest in her life. The cast work with their set spaces well, utilising the full run of set space and incorporating props into their scenes effortlessly. They’re clearly very at ease during the shoot, and appear to have had enough clear guidance to make it through the scene proficiently, but enough free leash to experiment with how things could work beyond that. As such, it’s clear to me that Bernard is a very thoughtful and considered director here and has been able to master getting exactly what was required from these scenes.

On a similar note the cine here is just extraordinary. With some inspired compositions that utilise depth of field, rich colours contrasting against grey and maudlin backdrops, decent blocking and most critically of all a hearty attempt at experimentation. With several shots throughout being nicely punctuated with sweeping pan shots,long tracking sequences and my particular favourite being a sequence where Anna is taking a lift down to the ground floor while trying to rescue the paperhouse, while her mum runs down the stairs after her. They do parallel tracking shots from the perspective of Anna in the lift watching her mum run down the stairs, and of Anna’s mum running down the stairs watching the lift slowly descend. It’s beautiful, and these kind of choices are littered throughout the entire production. Which is honestly, just such a nice thing to see.

Throw in some phenomenal lighting to boot, in which we not only dabble with just, really well lit general shots, but some decent stabs at chiaroscuro and coloured lighting gels which add a whole new dimension to proceedings and some experimental lighting setups that harken back to the german expressionist movement, and you have a film that frankly, is just phenomenal to look at, almost every shot is a painting. And, as if that wasn’t already a gift enough, only tying together and amplifying the script, direction and cines better qualities EVEN FURTHER. Is some top class editing which lets sequences breath, only cuts when necessary, uses cross fades and transitions effectively and helps to manage the pacing of the film in a way that honestly would have just fallen over in lesser hands. It’s a superb job.

Performance wise, everyone here is incredible, but for my money our core cast of Charlotte Burke, Gemma Jones and Glenne Headly are the real winners here. This was Charlotte’s one and only acting role. I know I have my rule about not discussing child actors. But given that she *technically* isn’t a child actor, as she had no intention of acting beyond this. I feel I can rather bend my own rules a bit here when I say that I think she’s probably one of the greatest child actors I’ve ever seen. She’s professional, animated and incredibly naturalistic, which, given this was her first acting role is just…incredible. I mean, good for her that she knew that this wasn’t something she could see being a lifelong thing. But I REALLY wish she’d done more because. This is the high water mark here, it really is.

Gemma and Glenne too both play things incredibly naturalistically, with both equally working a wide range of emotions throughout the course of the film and their performances here are exemplary. They really put their all into playing their roles with such precision, you’d honestly think it was a documentary in places for how lifelike their responses are. They’re simply excellent.

And finally; the soundtrack. And…I need this thing on Vinyl as soon as possible really. It’s a mix of synthy moody pieces and orchestral arrangements and it sounds, AMAZING. Easily one of my favourite scores i’ve heard in a DAMN long time. It’s a rich and sumptuous feast for the ears that, if you haven’t heard it before. I can recommend in and of its own right. It’s REALLY solid.

Paperhouse was released on VHS in 1990 by Vestron Pictures as a big box ex-rental, later receiving a retail release. It hit DVD in 2007 under Lionsgate in a…fairly disappointing release with a somewhat compressed (but watchable) picture quality, a cropped image and limited extras (basically a trailer and a couple of text only actor profiles are your lot) …And that’s it really, it has had a couple of releases on bluray in european territories. But I’m struggling to find out if these releases are remastered, or whether they’ve just upscaled an old master. In either case. This films SCREAMING for a bluray/4k release with some decent extras. It’s almost certainly a candidate for Criterion or at the very least a bit of boutique love.

I loved Paperhouse, and barring my thoughts on the ending, I feel there is SO much good present here. A damn near perfect script, crafted and considered cine and editing. Killer performances and an out of sight score. I am BEYOND grateful to the person who recommended this to me. I really hope you check out Paperhouse, Its a real trip and a high bar in my eyes for the fantasy drama genre as a whole.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/paperhouse/1/