Rediscover 6 forgotten fantasy movies, including strange 10/10 masterpieces worth another look
A frightening Wonderland
Jan Švankmajer’s Alice follows a young girl, played by Kristýna Kohoutová, into a world where household objects take on unsettling habits. The White Rabbit is stuffed, trapped in a glass case and carries a pocket watch inside its chest.
Scraping scissors, creaking drawers and clattering bones shape the film’s unnerving atmosphere. Its stop-motion creatures and close views of Alice’s mouth turn Lewis Carroll’s familiar story into something closer to a frightening dream.
Myth in vivid motion
Son of the White Mare follows Treeshaker, a superhuman warrior born from a magical white mare, as he descends toward the Underworld. He confronts dragons and seeks to rescue imprisoned princesses, accompanied by Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer; György Cserhalmi voices all three characters.
The Hungarian animation constantly shifts its forms and colors. Bodies become glowing patterns, dragons turn into geometric machinery, and landscapes transform in movement, creating a visual experience that can draw attention away from the plot.
A dream turns threatening
In Paperhouse, Anna Madden, played by Charlotte Burke, draws a house in her schoolbook and later finds herself outside it in a dream. She adds a staircase to reach Marc, a lonely boy she has drawn inside, while the empty landscape and bruised sky hint at danger.
Anna draws her absent father, then angrily scribbles over his face. In the next dream, he appears blind and carrying a hammer. Anna is seriously ill, Marc’s condition is worsening, and her attempts to change the drawings become increasingly frightening.
Key points
- The story identifies six forgotten fantasy films, but the supplied text describes only three.
- Alice turns Lewis Carroll’s tale into an unsettling stop-motion nightmare.
- Son of the White Mare combines folk mythology with constantly shifting animation.
- Paperhouse makes a child’s drawings the source of danger in her dreams.