Film #19 — 1/1 Film with Dreams as Part of the Plot
By C. Ramsay
From Bernard Rose, director of the original Candyman, Paperhouse is about a young girl named Anna who uses a dreamworld she’s created by drawing in her school composition notebook to escape her struggles in real life. Using a touch of Solaris to establish this, the quiet emptiness of Anna’s initial visit to her dreamworld is then juxtaposed with the suffocating and endlessly busy city of her reality, made worse by the fact that she is trapped in a car with her mother driving while being scolded for her recent behaviour. Tonally, however, the film is most reminiscent of The Babadook—Anna being annoyingly whiny but still endearing, the script a touch repetitive in its dialogue, and the editing a bit too choppy to fully come together in a polished way.
Although the concept of drawings coming to life or generating an alternate realm is not unheard of, it also isn’t the most popular basis for a storyline. Relatedly, as the film is only loosely adapted from a novel, Bernard Rose was able to establish the lore and mechanics of the dreamworld as he desired, which was incredibly interesting to experience unfolding without knowing what would come next. The set design is gorgeous, with the house itself being faithful to the wonkiness of Anna’s drawing capabilities. Having been drawn with regular pencil, every part of the house is in drab sepia tone and is disorienting and cavernous, the walls only meant to create a sheltered space to contain the most imaginative components of Anna’s world. The dreamworld set and its dressings are stylistically similar to Terry Gilliam’s designs, and do a great job of solidifying the imagination of their creator, reflecting whimsy along with the underlying fear and unease that so easily creeps into the minds of children.
Anna’s first time arriving in her dreamworld, triggered from a fainting spell which results in her awakening confused in an endless field with only the single, locked house to be seen for miles, is terrifying in how vast the space is. Her running looks slightly slowed and adds to the nightmarishness of the situation, being yet unsure about her whereabouts or her safety. Over the course of her visits, there is much joy to be experienced, but equally as much panic and apprehension, with pivots happening as quickly as they do in typical dream logic. A couple of shots are absolutely horrifying, happening so quickly that they act as jump scares and effectively begin to both recontextualize previous experiences at the house and taint future contact.
The biggest letdown of the film is that something about the pacing is off, with it never finding consistency between the dreamworld and real world, making it feel like it was ending multiple times and therefore scrubbing the impact of any tension it tries to build to in its final act. That being said, the lead actress, Charlotte Burke, gives a fantastic performance in her first and only credited role, and the story acts as a sympathetic examination of how kids attempt to cope with awful things—how dreams and memories, and experiences and fears, can end up blending seamlessly—with some of the specific examples in this case being more ambiguous than others.
Star rating (/5): ★★★
Recommend?: Yes