MovieChat Forums > Tideland (2006) Discussion > How bad is the child neglect/abuse?

How bad is the child neglect/abuse?


I'm asking because I was severely neglected and abused as a child (as well as escaping into imagination to cope). I really would like to see this, because I love creative, mindbender films, but I'm worried that it may be too close to home for me and might set off my PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

[Warning for descriptions of child abuse ahead.]


My parents weren't the same kind of junkies; my mother didn't do drugs at all, but my father was an explosively violent alcoholic who huffed various chemicals and who knows what else. I often had nothing to eat, lived in filth, was refused medical attention (even with severe blood loss and so on), had to take care of my younger siblings even though I was a child too, was constantly bruised and ravaged by insects, beaten near daily with planks of wood, surrounded by crazed hicks, forbidden from most forms of entertainment (but I snuck what I could; I loved movies so much!), not allowed to go to school (until I was 12 and I guess the city forced them/someone turned them in for it), etc.

There was also religious/psychological abuse; for instance, being exorcised of "demons" for having an asthma attack, since I was supposedly healed of that, so I was apparently either faking or possessed.

There was some sexual abuse too...

[End of descriptions of child abuse.]

So, yeah. Do you think it's too similar? Does it focus on reality much?

Sorry to bring people down by talking about my childhood. If it makes you feel any better, I disowned them and skipped the country. I'm still pretty messed up though. :/

I'm fine with most gore (bruising's a bit much sometimes though). I love horror movies. I'm just not so good with especially cruel things; especially if they are directed toward people who can barely defend themselves (children, animals, abused women, etc). I'm fine with sexuality; just not the abusive kind (BDSM doesn't count; I mean non-consensual stuff - child molestation and so on).

I've watched some pretty extreme stuff and not been that bothered by it. For instance: A Serbian Film (one thing near the end did bother me), Takashi Miike films, Guinea Pig films, Aftermath, Antichrist, etc. So I'm not exactly a fragile flower; I just have my limits.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

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Hi, sorry to hear about the difficulties of your background.

The movie follows the book pretty closely. And, like the book, it is more a character study of childhood and how a young child interacts with their surroundings/world. I would say the book (and movie) more closely parallel Alice In Wonderland/The Wizard of Oz mixed with 'Hope and Glory'/'Empire of the Sun'.

We as viewers are very aware of the very precarious situation this child is in. There really is no overt child abuse depicted within the film.

However it is clear that the father is an quiet addict who has abdicated his responsibilities of a parent to his addiction. He is guilty of neglect.

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Thank you for your response and condolences. I appreciate it. Maybe I will watch it afterall.

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"Does it focus on reality much?"

Certainly no need to worry about that - most of the film is spent in a half-imagined fantasy world. Not that it's any less haunting/kind of eerie for that, though.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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Really? It's fiction and you are trying to get sympathy for your screwed up childhood on the Internet?

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The parents in the movie are about as neglectful as they could get.

Sorry to hear about how much trouble you have letting go of the past.


If it makes you feel any better, the tangle of thoughts and memories you call your 'self' does not exist, and physically every cell in your body has been replaced in the past 6-8 years.

A captain of a ship cannot see where he's going if he's spending his time examining the bubbles in his wake for meaning.

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