Rating: 3/5
Anna turns 11 today. She draws a house with a fence and rocks surrounding it in class. Later, in the hall, she passes out. She comes to like Christina in Wyeth’s Christina’s World, the house she drew off in the distance. Before she can reach it, she is awake in the hall, her classmates standing around her. Her mother brings her a letter from her overseas father.
Later, while playing hide-and-seek with a friend, Anna enters a closed cave and finds herself back at the house. She knocks at the windows, but no one is there. She awakens to police and dogs surrounding her. They take her to her mother. Anna pulls out the picture of the house she drew and draws a boy into it. She accidentally makes him too sad, but her pencil won’t erase his frown.
In her dreams, Anna visits the house, asking for help. A boy comes to the window and tells her not to come in—it’s dangerous around here. Anna awakens with a fever and is drenched in sweat. She adds more and more details to the house.
The film follows the progress of Anna’s relationship with this boy and the real-world consequences of what Anna draws.
The film sometimes feels like Terry Gilliam, but it arrives at a more maudlin story than expected. It has the most literal depictions of “fever dreams” in a movie.
Hans Zimmer’s score is bombastic but effective! It hit in a couple of scenes—I was not prepared!
This movie really had me for a bit, but that last third is a little hard to grasp. The ending makes sense with the story told; it just changes the direction towards something less concrete.