Review of Inland Empire

Inland Empire is the Man with a Movie Camera of the 21st Century. It is the most experimental, surreal, and technically brilliant film I may have ever seen. Lynch proves that all he needs is a simple DV camera to show the world the entire range of human emotions and the human experience from the happiest to the darkest moments we must go through to achieve salvation and cleansing of the soul. This film is not so much about a particular story or narrative as it is about analyzing, exploring, and creating a visual palette for ideas about traveling to and from the past, present, and future as it relates to our constant journey back and forth into our own psyches and our collective unconscious. Each of Lynch's films explores the mind in terms of Jungian philosophy, focusing particularly on The Shadow; however, Inland Empire goes further in this direction than any film previous to it. If Mulholland Drive was 25% a dark and surreal suspense thriller ghost story and journey into the nether regions of the mind and 75% classical, yet not necessarily structural or connected narrative, Inland Empire is 10% straight narrative and 90% raw psychological horror ghost story.

The journey is long and hard but at the end you will be rewarded with the kind of peace and serenity that can only come from a meditation this long, deep, and powerful. I was filled with only inner bliss as I left the theatre and slept like a baby, completely at peace. This is David Lynch's most powerful film and speaks volumes on the many unexplored topics of how this medium can communicate, terrify, and heal in ways we have not yet even begun to understand.