Terry Gilliam: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

8. Tideland

Tideland, adapted from Mitch Cullen's novel of the same name, is perhaps Terry Gilliam's most audacious, frustrating and misunderstood movie. Made while The Brothers Grimm was languishing in post-production hell, it's also perhaps his most personal work, a film which straddles sublime poetry and psychological horror. Tideland tells the story of a young girl by the name of Jeliza-Rose (Jodell Ferland), alone after the death of her parents in rural Texas and left to her own devices, who slides further and further into a dark and twisted fantasy land in which multiple fractured personalities manifest themselves in the Barbie doll head she wears on her fingertip. Her father Noah (Jeff Bridges) - dead from a heroin overdose - decomposes in an armchair in the living room, a fact that Jeliza-Rose fails to understand since she has grown accustomed to him sitting in his chair comatose. As she ventures out of doors she encounters her neighbours, a young mentally impaired man called Dickens and his strange sister Dell (Brendan Fletcher and Janet McTeer). While Gilliam is no stranger to exploring childhood fantasies, Tidelands is perhaps his darkest movie, not least with the uncomfortably semi-erotic nature of the relationship between Jeliza-Rose and Dickens, which the young girl initiates, and the blending of morbid obsessions with childhood innocence. That said, the controversy - and undeserved critical panning - was ill-founded in terms of how you'd expect such dark subject matter to play out, and Gilliam's eccentric visual flourishes never overwhelm the psychological core, leaving the characters (real or imagined) at the heart of the film, however damaged that heart may be. Certainly no masterpiece, but perhaps the most underrated film in his body of work.