New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 5 - Paperhouse

 5
Paperhouse
1988, d. Bernard Rose (Candyman, Immortal Beloved)- amazonprime

The Story:

Anna is a difficult 11-year-old, acting out, lashing out, talking back, disrespecting authority.  After getting kicked out of class she passes out in the hallway and finds herself in a reality she drew on paper earlier that day.  She comes down with a fever and is sick for a while, falling into unconsciousness frequently.  Whenever she is out, she is in this alternate reality, so when she is awake she starts building upon it.  But in this reality there's a disabled boy that she's never met named Marc.

Anna learns that Marc is also a patient of the doctor (making house visits to her, no less) and that he's been in a rough state, his muscular dystrophy taking a turn. They both find solace in the dream reality, but when Anna lets loose the memory of her alcoholic father into the dream realm it turns nightmarish for the children.

Why This?
Looking through the "horror" categories of the various streaming services I'm subscribed to, it's mostly movies made post-2000.  I'm familiar enough with most of what's on Netflix, Crave doesn't have much at all, you don't find any horror on Disney Plus, there's a thing called Tubi that has mostly post-2000 cheapo horror, and amazonprime has a wealth of MST3K fodder from the 60's and 70's, some of the bigger titles from the 80's and 90's and more post-2000 cheapo horror.  The Paperhouse was one of few projects from the 80's/90's that I had never heard of and was curious.

What's Good?
This film takes some very bold turns.  Based on a 1958 novel  - Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr - it has an etherialness that is sort of a sweet spot for me.  It was rather unpredictable and for a film about two tweens falling in love (not really the main thrust) in a manufactured reality, I was surprised to see it deal with things like the trauma of an alcoholic parent and child mortality.

The soundtrack comes from Stanley Myers and Hans Zimmer, and was Zimmer's last co-score with Myers after a half decade of collaboration (he went on to his first big score in Rain Man after this).  It's what's trying to sell this as a horror movie more that anything else.

There's a big elaborate set piece (very in line with other 80's horror studio sets) early in the third act where a feverish Anna tries to rip her nightmare-father out of the picture she drew, causing a rift to open within the dream world, and it gets unexpectedly, insanely intense.  Visually it doesn't look like reality, but it's not supposed to be reality which works in its favor.

Not so good...
The acting in this is dogshit.  It's just horrendous.  It drags the entire thing down.  There's definitely a mood to this, which the Myers/Zimmer score captures well, but the acting (and the direction given to the actors) doesn't do much other than get the words across.  There's no genuine emotion, and sometimes the attempts at it are laughable.  So very little of what is performed seems convincing and there's no chemistry between any of the actors. 

The bad thing:
The bad thing in this is not exactly this manifested dream world, but the trauma Anna experiences when thinking about her father, a recovering alcoholic who is often absent due to work.  She has some serious issues that cause her to lash out, but are also clearly dangerous remaining unchallenged in her mind.

Franchise Potential?
I could definitely see this as a remake. I could really use a remake, but again with practical effects and a big fake-looking studio-set dream reality rather than some messy CGI construct.  And really delve deep into the psychology.  I would like them to age the characters up so that the love story has some real investment... children at 11-years-old don't really fall in love, they don't understand emotions.
And then they could franchise Anna's dream realities over decades, having a different actress play her at different stages in life with different traumas manifesting in horrifying ways.

Did I like watching this?
The acting was so bad, and the tone seemed so... 70's/80's thriller-for-kids (eg. Watcher in the Woods) but I'm glad I stuck with it to see the levels of intensity it reaches... the ending is confounding though.  So in total, I liked it a little.