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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Lost Highway
October Films


9.3

based on 21 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 16 votes
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FILM:

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: R for bizarre violent and sexual content, and for strong language

Starring Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Robert Blake, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Richard Pryor, Lucy Butler, and Michael Massee

This neo-noir is a mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity from director David Lynch. (October Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Horror \| Mystery \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	David Lynch Barry Gifford
DIRECTED BY:	David Lynch
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 25, 2002 Video: November 5, 2002 Theatrical: February 21, 1997
RUNNING TIME:	135 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	France / USA

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...

Dallas Observer Andy Klein

His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk with Me and less desperate and jokey than Wild at Heart.

Empire Christopher Hemblade

This is delightfully bonkers; an eerie and edgy outpouring that makes Twin Peaks look like Moonlighting.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

It's a weird movie, in that spooky/sicko, deadpan way that Lynch's movies always are, and it's guaranteed to repel anyone who likes entertainment wrapped in tidy resolutions and optimistic fade- outs.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Properly speaking, this isn't a movie with characters but with figures, each of them as overblown as a plastic inner tube.

The New Yorker Michael Sragow

The first half of this 1997 movie suffers from abstraction. Still, it's a compelling erotic nightmare.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Lost Highway has scattered moments of Lynch's poetry, but the film's ultimate shock is that it isn't shocking at all.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Lost Highway is unusually bizarre even for this atypical director. Co-written by Barry Gifford, the film ventures deeper into the nearly psychotic supernatural than any feature Lynch has previous overseen.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Beautifully made but emotionally empty, it exists only for the sensation of its provocative moments.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

Lost Highway, an elaborate hallucination that could never be mistaken for the work of anyone else, finds Mr. Lynch echoing the perversity of "Blue Velvet," the earlier film of his that this most closely resembles.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's a shaggy ghost story, an exercise in style, a film made with a certain breezy contempt for audiences.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The film actually deserves four stars for its imaginative style and astonishing suspense, zero stars for its shameless exploitation of violent shocks and loveless sensuality.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

David Lynch's eye-popping imagery is buried under an avalanche of self-indulgence.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

It's a soulless and dull bit of showmanship, but it sure sounds profound.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Lynch, who penned the screenplay with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart), seems to be attempting to capture not just a sense of place and time (it never works -- Lost Highway is wholly, irrevocably, out of place and without any linear time or time line to speak of), but also a sense of madness.

Newsweek Jack Kroll

In Lost Highway, reality has become a dream. But Lynch has forgotten how boring it is listening to someone else's dream.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

In Lost Highway, David Lynch dabbles in spooky, chilly implication and a sort of hip incoherence.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Here, Lynch has traded some of his disturbing originality for noir formula and schticky weirdness.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A feature-length Twilight Zone episode, filtered -- not entirely successfully -- though the sensibilities of David Lynch and his Wild at Heart collaborator, Barry Gifford.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

A slow, ponderous, ultimately unsuccessful exercise in cerebral nihilism.

Slate David Edelstein

Lost Highway, David Lynch's first movie in five years, is a virtuoso symphony of bad vibes.

The average user rating for this movie is 9.3 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Richard J. gave it a10:
A Brilliant Masterpiece. Thank God (David Lynch) for people like Zack H. and Joris and Horatio A. and Will S.

Bart gave it a10:
David Lynch does not make movies for buisness. His movies do not have a target audience becasue he does not care about audiences nor does he care or know the meaning of this film. If you can deal with that than you will love this movie. If you are a visual person you will also love this movie for it has a very unique dreamlike look that only David Lynch can master.

Zack H. gave it a10:
This was my first contact with Mr. Lynch's work. I watched it not knowing what to expect at all. When the final credits showed up, I was shocked! I sincerely thought that was the most nonsensical garbage of a movie I watched in the past decade! Despite that, I just couldn't get it out of my head for the following 4 hours. More than that: I was actually obsessed with it! Late at night that day, in bed, still trying to figure out what in the world I had just watched, I got the "revelation". Instantly, without watching the movie again, I was convinced this was one of the best movies of the decade! Thank you Mr. Lynch for providing an island of originality in an ocean of linear, dumbed-down, conservative story-telling. Lynch does on film what Escher does on canvas.

Joris gave it a10:
This is not a movie, this is Art. You have to analyze Lynch' surrealism like a dream, with all the archetypal creeps and weird characters as subconscious projections around a few protagonists. The critics are retarded and don't seem to get it. It's awesome and breathtaking from beginning to finale. One of my favourites -Mulholland Drive is even better!

Will S. gave it a10:
Anyone who votes less than 10 for this movie did not understand it, and therefore is an idiot.

Mike S gave it a3:
Has some good moments, but the as a whole the movie doesnt make sense. Good attempt by Lynch but its a failure. Very similar to Muholland Drive, but unlike Muhollland Drive which is a master piece. This is not.

Lost Highway October Films

Lost Highway
October Films