Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A Brilliant Conflict

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

After completing all three seasons of TWIN PEAKS, the TV series, one's final closure is this cinema prequel, aka, the last days of Laura Palmer, made in 1992 after the first two reasons, and was intended to herald an expanding Black Lodge universe, which was ill-fatedly scrubbed after the film's dead-on-arrival reception. The meat of Twin Peaks story is affixed to a prologue taking place one year prior in a God-forsaken town Deer Meadow, where FBI agent Chester Desmond (Isaak) mysterious disappears when he tries to retrieve a lost ring belongs to the murder victim Teresa Banks (Gidley), which triggers the concern from FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole (Lynch) and agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan), with the latter presciently foretells that another killing is imminent. The prologue gives us a glance of Lynch's original conception of its botched sequels, what happened to Agent Desmond, and the introduction of David Bowie's Special Agent Phillip Jeffires, who has gathered first-hand information about the eldritch rabbit hole, would have spirited us onto a Lynchian journey in another continent. Back to Twin Peaks, FIRE WALK WITH ME, is a watchword of Laura Palmer's (Lee) scourge, delineating roughly the last week of her life and pruning less pertinent threads, Lynch emphatically puts Laura under scrutinizing and Sheryl Lee gutsily takes it on herself to reify Laura's distraught psyche to a thoroughly haunting and transfixing effect, a vulnerable, terrorized, traumatized girl whose only rebellion against the creepy demon willing himself to overtake her is to give herself up to the complete abandon, when one's heart is dead, who cares about the body? It is a crying Oscar-caliber achievement goes criminally unsung, also Ray Wise stirringly amplifies his demonic impersonation of Laura's father, altogether, their effort speaks volume of what we habitually turn a blind eye on: incest and sexual abuse, human's original sin. Lynch's trademark nonsensical touches in the beginning gradually morph into a psychedelic horror (suffused with tawdry iridescence, exploitative nudity and nocturnal killing) when the film inches toward that bloody foregone conclusion peppered with frantic editing and benighted screaming. For Lynch's votaries, the movie is par for the course of earning the reputation as a film maudit, yet, assessed under a broader spectrum, as a singular piece, it still holds its own with Lynch's peculiar conceits pumped up in high voltage, an eerie, spine-tingling voyage into a cosmic myth, the puzzle is unsolved, but redemption elevates itself in the final shot, rest in peace, Laura Palmer, an angel mired in the temporal vice.

I have seen this film a number of times, and it still affects me brutally. The film just gets such an emotional response out of me every time I see it that when I'm done watching it, the power of certain visuals and performances (Sheryl Lee and her horrified expressions are hard hitting and it's so sad to see that she practically got no recognition for her performance in this when it was first released to much unreasonable and confusing hatred) still linger. Lynch...Lynch...Lynch...how brilliant can one man be? I have spent many a review gushing over his projects and their artistic, absurdist, and avant garde brilliance. It feels as if my constant, passionate praise has sucked the man dry of any further discussion, and yet there's always MORE things I can compliment Lynch for. Lynch makes the mundane seem horrific and surreal, he turns the tables on the viewer and subverts any and all expectations on a nearly scene by scene basis. The entire first half hour of this movie is one prolonged, darkly humorous examination of an anti-Twin Peaks, a terribly bizarre, disconnected, and mean spirited little town named Deer Meadow. With this first section of the film, Lynch takes one of his most popular, well established products and basically just parodies it with a multitude of characters viewers of the original series had never seen or heard of before...and he pulls it off as more than just some kind of "troll"; instead, he uses it as a vessel to explore the everpresent doppelganger theme that appears in much of his work, Peaks in particular, while also helping bring some comedy in the mix of this otherwise painfully tragic and disturbing work of surrealist horror.Then, things get even weirder when we are faced with familiar faces, particularly the face of the iconically quirky and chipper Agent Dale Cooper who's looking much more worrisome and disturbed than usual. And then Lynch goes all out insane with the surrealism, every shot is experimental, audio overlaps and lights flash and images of wild absurdity are constant. This scene must be experienced to be believed, there is no describing such a momentous David Lynch sequence. There is no describing of it.Scenes like this consistently pop out of the blue throughout the movie...except they aren't "out of the blue" at all. A first time viewer may be baffled by some of these visuals and scenes, but a devoted enough explorer of the Twin Peaks universe(s?!) will soon be able to realize that all of these moments have some sort of purpose. Lynch is telling a story, but, as Lynch always does, he tells this story in an unconventional way, breaking as many boundaries as he can get away with.And yet the film is still relatable and emotionally affecting. It's simultaneously a creepily atmospheric surrealist nightmare and a deeply troubling dark tragedy about a young woman coming to terms with the pains of abuse and her own twisted world that steadily shreds its fabric day by day...Even after this barrage of disturbing and borderline traumatizing imagery and sounds (the score for this film is just phenomenal...but it's also the most demented and distressing movie soundtrack I've ever heard), there is still a brief flash of light at the end of the title.And then the legend of Twin Peaks is ready to truly begin...(Cue Twin Peaks theme)

The television show "Twin Peaks" was one of the most influential show of all time. It was ground breaking. It also broke the rules and sometimes that worked against the show. In the original show of "Twin Peaks" a FBI agent Dale Cooper comes to the small town of "Twin Peaks" to investigate the death of Laura Palmer. As we follow Cooper we see everything on the surface is just that "surface". What is behind closed doors at any residence is what drove the mystery. When the show ended the fans were left with a cliffhanger. A year later when this film was released we were hoping that the cliffhanger would be resolved but it wasn't. Instead we get the last week of Laura life and we slowly see her life was a nightmare. We see her demise of not only physical but also spiritual. A life so out of control tragedy was sure to come.Keep in mind this is an R RATED film. This is not a feature length television episode. The ugly side of life was only hinted at in the television show. In this film we see the "Ugly Truth" The film might not be for everyone but it is one of the best films of 1992. The plot the film is that the folksy town of Deerfield, Wash., FBI Agent Desmond (Chris Isaak) inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the similarly cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Lara Palmer (Sheryl Lee) seems destined for a grisly fate.Please watch this after you have seen the entire television show. this is a prequel!

This is one of David Lynch's finest films. Considering the popularity of the This is one of David Lynch's finest films. Considering the popularity of the "Twin Peaks" TV series, this would seem a hard act to follow. As usual, Lynch doesn't fail to intrigue and push the envelope even further. The film does pander to those who wanted to see the last seven days of Laura Palmer's life, but it also sets many subplots in motion which were hinted at during the series. "Fire Walk With Me" is much, much darker than the series in terms of style, direction, plot, acting, humour and cinematography, and in many ways stands independently of the series. The beauty is that one does not need the other. They are both memorable in their own ways, similar in some but extremely different in others.This film works most efficiently if you have seen both seasons of the "Twin Peaks" series, as it's power resides in the inevitability of Laura's demise (this is not to say it is by the numbers and there are no surprises in store) and images from the later episodes of the series (which, yes, occur a long time later chronologically). It is considerably darker, however, than the series with the humor more or less restricted to the opening half hour, which sets up the entire "Twin Peaks" story, but once Laura Palmer is introduced, the story is (appropriately, to say the least) extremely dark and void of the light tone which characterized the television series. It is, like much of David Lynch's canon, a film that will surprise you and find beauty and truth in the strangest images and places. As long as you are aware of Lynch's earlier work (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Dune or The Elephant Man), the darker scenes/moments should not come as too much of a surprise. If you expect more of the TV series, you will, I'm afraid, be disappointed. But with an open mind, you will enjoy this film on it's own, strong merits.Overall rating: 9 out of 10.