Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.
Terry Gilliam's deeply divisive film earns high marks for its singular, hallucinatory visual style and genuinely unique conception — a child's-eye dark fantasy that is unmistakably its own creation. The cinematography is striking throughout, capturing the grotesque beauty of the decaying prairie landscape. The novelty is exceptional; few films inhabit a child's dissociative imagination so relentlessly and uncomfortably. The plot, however, is thin and episodic, functioning more as a series of disturbing vignettes than a structured narrative. The acting is uneven — Jodelle Ferland is remarkable, but supporting performances vary wildly. The ending deflates rather than resolves, leaving the film feeling unmoored rather than deliberately open, which even admirers of the film tend to find unsatisfying.