Tideland

Tideland (2005) is a dark fantasy drama from Terry Gilliam you can watch online on iFILM. Adapted from Mitch Cullin's novel, it stars Jeff Bridges and a young Jodelle Ferland.

Ten-year-old Jeliza-Rose grows up between her rocker father's heroin highs and her mother's methadone haze. When her mother dies, her father hauls her off to the crumbling farmhouse of his childhood, lost in endless prairie wheat. Soon he is gone too. Left entirely alone, Jeliza-Rose retreats into her own imagination: her only friends are the severed heads of dolls, and the strange neighbors she meets turn out to be no saner than the world inside her head.

Gilliam, who made Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, warns viewers right in the opening that many will find this one hard to take. Childhood here gets no sugarcoating; it plays out through the eyes of a child who turns nightmare into make-believe because survival leaves her no other option. It is divisive, uneasy, not for everyone. Stream Tideland (2005) online on iFILM.