Inland Empire

This is why David lynch is the best director to ever pick up a camera. This movie is confusing to follow, disorienting and incredibly grainy and that works entirely in its favour, the confusing leaves you in a loop of somewhat confident of the themes and plot until you’re blindsided by a surreal nightmare and the movie takes a tonal shift over and over its three hour runtime that didn’t once drag for me. While the plot and themes aren’t entirely clear without deeper analysis, the way you feel when watching this movie is exactly how lunch wants you to feel, sharp loud noises are used throughout however only scare you when they should and can also act as abrupt scene transitions without striking you with fear. This movie perfectly plays with your emotions until it’s emotional climax with the scene after the main character is supposedly stabbed to death and walked off stage and as we see her walk through prior areas and places with lynch’s superb camerawork and score a sense of unease works its way into your very core, in my theatre it felt like you could feel the collective fear building, this resulted in the most uncomfortable I’ve ever felt during a movie with the face swapping jumpscare, I felt paralysed and unable to look away at this viscerally upsetting, surreal culmination of three hours worth of tension and it was exactly what lynch intended. Bravo David you really were the greatest man to ever pick up a camera