Lurch into la-la land

Ex-Python Terry Gilliam has always had the lurid, wonky imagination of a ten-year-old girl, which may be why the 65-year-old director has chosen to set lonely, overactive Jeliza-Rose (Jodelle Ferland) at the heart of his latest film.

Tideland, a very Gilliam adaptation of Mitch Cullin's novel, is a world that exists in Jeliza-Rose's head, encompassing a collection of chatty dolls' heads, talking squirrels and half-glimpsed horrors.

The daughter of junkies, Jeliza-Rose is dragged off by her spaced-out father (Jeff Bridges) to his empty childhood home in the middle of a cornfield; as Daddy drifts off into heroin-soaked la-la land, his daughter is left hungry and alone, with only the witch across the way (Janet McTeer) and her epileptic, backward brother Dickens (Brendan Fletcher) for intermittent company.

Gilliam can't tell a story for toffee and this is a tumble down the rabbithole that never actually gets to Wonderland.

But it has touches of dark magic nonetheless, as the camera prowls back and forth, keeping its beady, glittering gaze on this pretty, feral child whose reality is so nightmarish that her elaborate fantasy world seems almost surplus to requirements.

Tideland
Cert: 15