INLAND EMPIRE

David Lynch either makes great movies – Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive – or he makes shitty movies – Lost Highway, Dune, The Straight Story, Baby Geniuses 2. This time he has made a shitty movie, and its name is Inland Empire.

I won’t berate it for being incomprehensible, or like a dark nightmare, because Lynch’s great movies are too, but it is lacking a gripping central narrative thread to make the darkness and the weirdness compelling.

Laura Dern gives an intense and convincing performance as a woman in trouble, although after watching this movie I don’t ever want to see her face again.

Arghhh!

Grade: E

David Lynch Movie Contents Checklist

- People walking through dark rooms and corridors – Check.
- Bland / handsome-faced male protagonist dressed in black – Check.
- Betrayed psychopathic husband figure – Check.
- Red Curtains – Check.
- Crackling light bulb – Check.
- Harry Dean Stanton – Check.