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Inland Empire
518 Media Inc. / Absurda


7.3

based on 24 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 82 votes
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FILM:

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: R for language, some violence and sexuality/nudity

Starring Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, Justin Theroux, Scott Coffey, Grace Zabriskie, and Diane Ladd

The latest hallucinatory vision from the iconoclastic director of "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks," Inland Empire stars Laura Dern in a tour-de-force performance as, perhaps, an actress who lands a dream role that quickly devolves into nightmare. (IFC Center)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Mystery
WRITTEN BY:	David Lynch
DIRECTED BY:	David Lynch
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: December 6, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	172 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Poland / France
LANGUAGE(S):	Polish / English

Future Film Festival Digital Award, 2006 Venice Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.

100

Premiere Aaron Hillis

Inland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it.

100

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

While I did enjoy the ride I took with the film, after the lights came up I was just thrilled Lynch was allowed to create such a journey for us to go on. Imagine what the cinema world would be like if more great directors threw caution to the wind and followed their artistic vision. It's a world I'd like to see and I hope Lynch continues to pave the way.

100

Empire Damon Wise

A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma, featuring a superb, multi-layered performance by Laura Dern.

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

David Lynch's first digital video, almost three hours long, resists synopsizing more than anything else he's done. Some viewers have complained, understandably, that it's incomprehensible, but it's never boring, and the emotions Lynch is expressing are never in doubt.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It is Lynch's most experimental endeavor in the 30 years since "Eraserhead," that it will do nothing to draw new fans to the director's work and that, after two viewings, I cannot wait to see it again.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

One of the few films I've seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Inland Empire may be the most aggressively surreal feature film ever released to movie theaters in this country, and it's possibly close to the movie David Lynch carries around in his head.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Only David Lynch could make the incomprehensible so compelling.

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

The film is dazzling and bewildering in equal measure.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Those willing to give themselves up to Lynch's sensibilities will find a hypnotic and richly textural experience that challenges them to make their own connections through the imagery, echoes of repeated dialogue and metaphor.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

It may not look like anything he's done before, but Inland Empire joins "Mulholland" and the whatzit "Lost Highway" (1997) to form the strangest show-business triptych around. All three concern artists whose identities demand more than one body. The films give new meaning to the phrase "dual citizenship."

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

David Lynch's Inland Empire left me grasping for the merest crumbs of comprehension.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

By the time Inland Empire, David Lynch's three-hour digital epic shot on a home video camera, takes you through its tour of the contents of the director's febrile imagination, it's probably the bunnies you'll most remember.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

If anything, it's worth watching as yet another example of Lynch's extraordinary collaboration with Dern. It may be overstating things to call her performance heroic, but it's nothing if not brave, as she dares to embody Lynch's most brutal impressions of Hollywood -- not as a dream factory, but as the place where dreams come to die.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Shot on grainy, often blown-out and distorted consumer-grade video, scored to a feedback distortion-heavy soundtrack that will be familiar to fans and tinnitus sufferers alike, and clocking in at one merciful minute under three hours, Lynch's much-anticipated follow-up to "Mulholland Drive" signals a hale swan-dive off the deep end, away from any pretense of narrative logic and into the purer realm of unconscious free association. I found myself pining for "The Elephant Man," but that's just me.

Slate Dana Stevens

Ultimately, Inland Empire left me angry at David Lynch, but it was the kind of intimate anger you feel when disappointed by someone you love. If you can tolerate its lack of narrative cohesion, Lynch's film will continue to reward you with visual and auditory surprises right up till the end.

Variety Jay Weissberg

Inland Empire may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Inland Empire is way, way beyond my powers of ratiocination. It's the higher math.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Inland Empire is Lynch's most experimental film since "Eraserhead." But unlike that brilliant debut (or its two masterful successors, "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Dr."), it lacks concentration. It's a miasma. Cheap DV technology has opened Lynch's mental floodgates.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

What is Inland Empire - which Lynch is understandably distributing himself - about? What is it trying to say? If you figure that out, let me know.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Over time, though, with films such as "Lost Highway" and, to a lesser extent, "Mulholland Drive," Lynch's movies became less personal and more private. Whatever he is working out in his new film, Inland Empire, it's beyond the reach of all but his idolators.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Inland Empire is so locked up in David Lynch's brain that it never burrows its way into ours.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.3 (out of 10) based on 82 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

THAT MOVIE GUY gave it a10:
This is the type of movie that is impossible to give a perfect score review to, w/o sounding like a pretentious, art snob elitist. Simply because, this movie is so avant-garde, and so different from 99% of other independent movies, not to mention all the mainstream movies we all watch, that you can't compare it to much, except Lynch's own body of work. INLAND EMPIRE at a superficial level, could be called "Mulholland Drive" gone all "Eraserhead" with no "Twin Peaks". But really, it's just David Lynch's first full on subconscious trek of imagination, since Eraserhead. Just pure creativity, instead of setting up a linear story, lynch's "Picasso-esque" style, of throwing fragment of plot lines around, and then distorting their shape and importance later, gives EMPIRE an ability to impact the engrossed viewer, has honest to God, NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE! This movie is not LIKE a dream, it IS a dream. You leave the theatre confused as to what you saw and felt, as much as you try to hold on to the pure magic of those moments, that came like a surprise birthday party, out of the blue. I do not think David Lynch is the greatest film maker around or anything like that, but I do think he's ONE of the greatest around. However, I think his skill and the type of wild movies he makes are not totally interconnected. To me, Lynch JUST HAPPENS to make avant-garde films, like Aphex Twin just happens to make electronic music. In a parallel timeline, Lynch might be making some of the best Spielberg type movies around, and Micheal Bay makes really pretentious art films that ONLY snobs like (isn't that what Transformers is anyway? one big blur of color?). Anyway, seeing this movie in theaters was absolutely magical for me and the 2 friends i saw it with. I hope you have a similar experience.

Peter E. gave it a5:
The point isn't whether David Lynch is an artistic genius. Who can say? This is why I give the film a middling 5. The point is that this film was falsely advertised. To label it as "Drama", as it was at my cinema and also on this website (Mystery/Drama) is simply an incorrect classification. "Experimental" or "Avant garde" is proper. This way, people who fork over the money to see the film know what they are getting. So many of the user reviews (mine being one) are because we had the wrong expectation before seeing the film. Like Twin Peaks and Lynch's last several movies, I thought this one would have some semblance of plot and at least identifiable story characters--these are fundamental features of the "drama" genre (and most others, for that matter). This film had neither. It's fine for critics to tell people they should sit back and just "experience" the potpourri of visuals and weird emotions this movie provides, but that's hardly what most viewers expect to do when they pick out a movie to go see which is classified as "Drama." This is deception on the part of producers and distributors, which I suspect is rooted in greed, wanting to suck a wider audience than appropriate into the theatres. That was shortsighted on their part. This film should have been titled: Inland Empire: an Experimental Film by David Lynch. The user reviews would have been much higher and everyone would be a lot happier who chose to spend the money to see it.

Fred C. gave it a0:
I rarely go to a movie that I feel was a total waste of money, but this one certainly was. I boldly sat through the entire unstructured mess, even though a good 1/3 of the audience had trickled out by the end. I've liked all of Lynch's films except for Eraserhead, but this fiasco even made Eraserhead look good. Come on, Mr. Lynch, you can do better! Please make some movies with the audience in mind, not just to put your fantasies on celluloid. After all, you are expecting us to PAY to go see your work. It seems to me you've let success go to your head.

Jessica gave it a0:
Well! I love movies, and I was whiling to watch the whole movie... But this one.... was just the worst movie ever. I love confusing movies that shows you something interesting, but this one was terrible and it seemed like someone just filmed a bunch of different scenes and put them all in different order. The actors were good, but the movie wasn't good.

Mark E. gave it a10:
Film as art. If you can get past the need for the traditional narrative structure and just soak up the imagery and atmosphere you will find this is three hours rewardingly spent.

Fred M. gave it a2:
Extremely long and tedious mind-teasing mess. It lacks the compelling cohesive narrative of Lynch's previous films Mulholland Dr. or Lost Highway, whose themes also dealt with a fragmented psyche and experiencing a nightmarish alternative realities. Although Lynch is successful at presenting a dream state-like world, the film's overindulgence and pretentiousness result in a confusing bore. Previous Lynchean themes are all there: evil entities (Twin Peaks), enslaved women (Blue Velvet), alternative realities and stream of consciousness, weird characters and symbolic situations, but this time they do not capture our imagination. Shots of dilapidated buildings in the Polish winter or bare and dark Hollywood sets where an overacting Laura Dern get lost in the dark become interminable and meaningless. Close ups of faces in distress and histrionics are not elements of good filmmaking. I had to resist my urges to fall sleep! If you want to waste 3 hours of your time, watch it at your own risk.

Willis S. gave it a7:
Inland Empire is strictly for David Lynch fans and lovers of Art House movies. This movie is not for the casual 'noir' fan who will most definitely lose interest because of the non linear plotline and the nearly three hour running time. Patrons will benefit from watching this movie with friends who are willing to discuss and argue about the 'plot' and meaning of Inland Empire. Seen alone, this movie will most certainly leave some lost and asking too many questions. I personally left this movie confused and disappointed, but after some research and finding some 'explaination' of the movie on the internet I felt better about the movie and the story that Lynch was trying to tell, albeit in an overly abstract manner. Overall, a movie going experience fans of abstract noir should not miss.

Inland Empire 518 Media Inc. / Absurda

Inland Empire
518 Media Inc. / Absurda