Paerhouse (1988)

Comcrap's OnDemand free movies occasionally yields some interesting finds, I first watched Big Trouble in Little China, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, In a Lonely Place, and A Screaming Man on there, to name a few titles. Paperhouse should have been another addition to the small collection of hidden gems I have seen through the rather unreliable service, but alas, it is bogged down by maudlin sentimentality, a nonsensical script, and more plot holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. Puns aside, Paperhouse is about a young girl who draws a picture of a house, and when she goes to sleep, she finds herself inside the drawing. Next she draws a boy, and when she goes to sleep, he is inside the house. But soon she finds herself stuck in this mysterious world for longer periods, and when she attempts to draw her ever-absent dad into the world, things go horribly awry. Paperhouse has some great visuals and set designs going for it, and the look and feel of the film is certainly unique. The central performance by Charlotte Burke as the young girl is convincing and naturalistic, and elevates the film to a slightly higher level. With that said, this is a mess. The first hour is very promising, and there is a lot of dark and spooky material, but for some reason, it just falls apart. The relationship between the little girl and her dad left a great deal to be desired; it is implied he had a drinking problem, and his eventually becoming the villain suggests more than we are ever shown. But then in the last half hour, all of that is thrown out, and he appears as a genuinely loving and caring father. Then there is the relationship with the boy in the house; supposedly he and the girl are psychically linked, and he is in fact dying of muscular dystrophy in the real world, but the connection is never fully explained, and the vagueness surrounding it does nothing to serve the overall work; the film is not anymore profound because it is deliberately murky in this area, rather it feels like a case of lazy writing passed off under the guise of "let the audience figure it out". Instead we get a cheap love story that kind of comes out of nowhere. There was definitely a chance for a great film to be made here, but it was a missed chance, and we are instead left with something very disappointing.