TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

By turns fascinating and intolerable.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

It's no "trip through the dark to appreciate the light." It's a nightmare from start to finish.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Gilliam has suffered more than his share of butchered projects, but with this exercise in kamikaze auteurism, he appears to have made exactly the mess he wanted.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Tideland is, by turns, a complete bore and a creepy experience. And I don't mean "creepy" in a positive sense.

Variety

Dragged down by a sputtering script and torpid pacing. Way too disturbing for kids and too weird for most grown-ups.

The Hollywood Reporter by Michael Rechtshaffen

A misconceived washout of a darkly gothic story of madness, addiction and child abuse made all the more unpleasant by Gilliam's trademark intense visual style.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

Borderline unwatchable, although, as is true of all Gilliam movies, it certainly is different.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

The worst that can be said of the first two-thirds of Tideland is that it is tiresome. Toward the end it becomes creepy, and not in a good way.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

The misanthropic nadir of the director's crash-and-burn career.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

Dour, absurdist, gruesomely awful.