Poor Terry Gilliam. As if getting body-slammed by the Weinstein brothers during The Brothers Grimm wasn’t bad enough, he arrived at last year’s Toronto Film Festival with this modest fantasy-drama – shot during a Grimm hiatus – only to watch critics pile-drive into it like a slap-happy rugby team. Sadly, Total Film finds itself joining the scrum, because Tideland is a fairly distasteful Gothic washout.
Following little orphan Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who’s left to fend for herself under the open skies after her junkie parents croak, the film is two creepy-in-the-wrong-way hours spent with charm-devoid freaks like Jennifer Tilly’s Baby Jane hysteric and Brendan Fletcher’s drooling farmhouse idiot. Ferland just about holds your attention, but it’s hard to work out why Gilliam wants us to watch these lurid grotesques.
