Terry Gilliam's early films were full of imagination and visual splendour but, sadly, the long wait for an enjoyable new one goes on. I'd say the last enjoyable Gilliam outing was Twelve Monkeys a decade ago (and before that Brazil a further 10 years back).

Tideland is described by the director as "Alice in Wonderland meets Psycho" and is about an 11-year-old with junkie parents who both peg out, leaving her with some equally unbalanced locals on the prairie, where she retreats into a fantasy world communicating with bodiless Barbie dolls she uses as finger-puppets.

Taken from Mitch Cullin's well-received southern gothic novel, the screen version is an odd tale with no apparent point - it's neither particularly funny nor creepy, just relentlessly strange. It plays like a kids' film that's far too scary for kids and may only appeal to the book's fanbase. Twelve-year-old Jodelle Ferland makes the most of a difficult central part - she's barely ever offscreen - but although Jeff Bridges has always been pretty laid-back, it seems a waste to have his Dude-on-smack character comatose or dead for most of the film. For the rest of us it's a two-hour trawl that's awfully hard to concentrate on.