Paperhouse

Eleven-year-old Anna Madden struggles to connect with the people around her and retreats into her own world. During a school lesson she draws a house in her exercise book, and she soon discovers that the drawing comes alive when she sleeps, letting her enter it and shape it further. Inside this dream place she meets Marc, a seriously ill boy, and the two form a bond. Over time the boundary between her waking life and her imagination begins to break down, and the dream world starts to intrude on reality in ways that trouble her.

Paperhouse is a British drama, fantasy and horror film directed by Bernard Rose, working from a screenplay by Matthew Jacobs. It was the first of the fourteen films Rose has directed, followed by Chicago Joe and the Showgirl in 1990. The cast includes Charlotte Burke as Anna, Elliott Spiers as Marc, Glenne Headly, Gemma Jones, Ben Cross and Jane Bertish, and the film was produced by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.6 out of 10 from more than six thousand votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.5 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 8.2 out of 10, drawn from a handful of reviews, places it noticeably higher than the audience scores.