Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Directed by

David Lynch

Genre

drama film, fantasy film, horror film, crime film, experimental film, surrealist film

Country

France, United States

Runtime

2h 15m

Rated

R

Rating

7.4 of 10 from 2,294 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The film follows FBI agents investigating a murder in a small town, then focuses on the final week of a popular high school student who hides a dangerous double life. It shows the events leading up to her death, which was the central mystery of the television series.

disturbingbleaknightmarishvisceralmelancholicunsettlingoppressivesurreal

What happens

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a 1992 psychological horror film directed by David Lynch, and co-written by Lynch and Robert Engels. It serves as a prequel to seasons one and two of the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991), created and produced by Mark Frost and Lynch. It begins with the FBI's investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) before shifting to the last seven days of the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a popular-but-troubled high school student in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington. Palmer's murder was the primary plot thread of the original TV series. Greenlit shortly after the TV series was cancelled, Fire Walk with Me has a much darker tone than the TV series and does not address many of season two's unfinished narratives, including its cliffhanger ending. Although most of the television cast reprised their roles for the film, many comparatively lighthearted scenes featuring town residents were cut. In addition, the series' main star, Kyle MacLachlan (Dale Cooper), asked for his role to be downsized, and Lara Flynn Boyle's character Donna Hayward was recast with Moira Kelly. In 2014, several deleted scenes were recut and released as a compilation film titled Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces. Fire Walk with Me premiered at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival in competition for the Palme d'Or. The film was notoriously polarizing: the American press generally panned the film. The film was controversial for its frank and vivid depiction of sexual abuse, its relative absence of fan-favorite characters, and its surrealistic style. It was a box-office bomb in North America, but fared better in Japan and France. Due to the poor reception, plans for a sequel were abandoned. The film has been positively re-evaluated in the 21st century, and is now widely regarded as one of Lynch's major works. Lynch and Frost eventually received funding to produce a third season of the TV series in 2017, which revisited several plot threads from the film. In 2019, the British Film Institute ranked Fire Walk with Me the fourth-best film of the 1990s. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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