Paperhouse (1988)

Let's get the flaws out of the way: stilted acting (mostly in the mother's flat line reads) and weird pacing (typical 3-act story but with a long, meandering denouement), plus the waking-world parts sometimes felt too-mundane in an almost sinister way, ~90% UK kids' drama ~10% Jam skit. Okay, but what you're really here for are the dream scenes. There's the titular house and its contents, all off-kilter physical manifestations of a child's drawings with all the fun “wrongness” that implies. Then there's the touch of unreality in the landscape, sound design, and scene framing that sets everything on edge long before the horror starts (and after it ends). Finally, to the team's credit, the film goes above and beyond the great props and set and atmosphere, giving us a relationship between two children who're portrayed neither in a cloying nor cynical way but as earnest, wilful, fully-realised people. It's not a complex film, but it is sad and sweet.