Paperhouse

Except for one serious (but not fatal) flaw, this sleeper has more imagination and style than half a dozen so-called horror films. The set-up is remarkably simple: 10-year-old Anna (Charlotte Burke) draws a house which later appears in her dreams. Bedridden with fever, she begins adding new elements to the picture, gradually becoming obsessed with the relationship between the drawing and her nightmares. Director Bernard Rose creates a lushly colored dreamscape in which dream logic serves up one terrifying dilemma after another for the plucky Anna. When Anna adds her estranged father--and then changes her mind--Paperhouse roars into one of the most chilling sequences of the year (it really does feel as if your blood is running cold). The only drawback to the film is Anna's character outside her dreams. In her real life--fever or not--Anna is one truly obnoxious child who treats her mother like a foot servant. This facet of her character tends to lessen the sympathy for her terrifying travails in dreamland. Based on Catherine Storr's book Marianne Dreams, this is an intelligent chiller which frightens by probing archetypal fears rather than dangling bloody bodies in your face. Recommended. (R. Pitman)