10 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Films That Were Much Too Depressing For The Masses

8. Tideland (2005)

Terry Gilliam is no stranger to dark slices of fantasy; his entire career has been built on it, from his days as a Pythonite onwards. But Gilliam outdoes The Fisher King, Twelve Monkeys, The Brothers Grimm and even dystopian satire Brazil with his 2005 box office dud Tideland, because absolutely nothing goes right for anyone in that film at any point. A macabre odyssey full of death, madness, child abuse and corpse preservation, Tideland is the film that critic Jonathan Rosenbaum called "diseased Lewis Carroll." Gilliam's focus on Tideland is precocious child Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland), who escapes into her own dream world to speak to her friends Mustique, Sateen Lips, Baby Blonde and Glitter Gal, who all creepily happen to be doll's heads, with the voices provided by Jeliza-Rose's solitudinous mind. Ten minutes in, her mother chokes to death. 20 minutes in, her father Noah (Jeff Bridges) dies of a heroin overdose. That's after he's already taken Jeliza-Rose and fled with her to a middle-of-nowhere Texas farmhouse, where she's forced to fend for herself after Noah kicks the bucket. Jeliza-Rose then befriends two mentally impaired locals, Dickens (Brendan Fletcher) and Dell (Janet McTeer), a brother and sister pair who help preserve the rotting Noah, just as they did with their own dead mother. Then Jeliza-Rose and Dickens form some inappropriate quasi-relationship. Then Dickens blows up a train. There's also a talking squirrel... y'know, for the kids.