Tideland

Jeliza-Rose, who has lost both parents, is left alone in an isolated farmhouse in rural Texas. Her father's body is still in the house and she keeps counting him as present. Her friends are severed Barbie heads, and the fantasy she builds gets darker. Then she meets the strange neighbours. Terry Gilliam directed, from Mitch Cullin's novel. The reaction split hard. It won the FIPRESCI Prize at San Sebastián, where the juror Sergi Sanchez praised Gilliam's risky and radical image. Mainstream criticism was hostile. Owen Gleiberman called it gruesomely awful. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 31 percent and Metacritic at 31. Gilliam said he expected the polarisation and that audiences would either love the film or hate it. He also attacked THINKFilm, his American distributor, over their unauthorised change to the aspect ratio for home video. The box office was a catastrophe: 566,611 dollars worldwide against a 19 million budget. Who it is for: viewers curious about disturbing fairy tales and Gilliam at his furthest edge. Who it is not for: most people. At the centre is a child's relationship with a corpse, and the director makes no attempt to soften it.