Review of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) by Anomaly . — 07 Jul 2012

In the opening image of this Twin Peaks prequel, an axe destroys a television set while a woman screams in horror. Herein lies the problem with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, David Lynch created a canonical Twin Peaks text while eliminating all of the charm and small touches that made the television show so amazing. He blew up the television Twin Peaks and made an uneven and baffling film Twin Peaks.

The first act is a mess. It's a half hour of events that are so lacking in straightforward logic that I have no idea what questions it is supposed to make me ask, let alone what relation it has to the remaining hour and 45 minutes of the film. A girl is dead, David Bowie talks about the black lodge in an incoherent way, and an FBI agent disappears. No attention is paid to these situations later in the film.

The remaining film is much more watchable, albeit unsatisfying. The events are darker, misguidedly sexier, and very uneven, but the familiarity with the characters from the show and the closer semblance to linear narrativity make it intelligible.

Overall, Fire Walk With Me is just a frustrating frustrating film that might have been interesting if it wasn't a Twin Peaks film, although there are still more mysteries opened up than closed. After perusing IMDB message boards, I've concluded that there is some level of logic to the film, but it requires a level of understanding that comes more from conjecture and community agreement than anything actually provided us by Lynch. I remain interested in uncovering the mysteries of Twin Peaks, but all that this movie did for me was show me how far I have to go.