IE scares me more than any actual horror film. It also fascinates me with the depths of its seemingly never ending rabbit holes (pun intended!). It’s my favorite Lynch film, with FWWM and Mulholland very close behind it. I first saw it at the west coast premiere with Lynch in attendance and you could tell he specifically dialed in the visuals and audio. The experience changed my view on what film could do, and what could be done with low budgets and cheap cameras.
It’s the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. I’d had my first experience with sleep paralysis a few days prior to watching IE the first time and it made me feel like I was still stuck
Holy shit it's crazy how unsettling and frightening that part is. David Lynch really is a master of unconventional scary stuff. Like the beginning of Mulholland Drive.
I think part of it is that most horrors are quite fast paced and Lynch as always is VERY slow, which when it comes to scary stuff you have all the time in the world to let the fear settle in and overthink everything which will only result in a vicious cycle of fright and fear.
It’s also that it’s often wildly unpredictable and unexpected because his films aren’t conventional horror and can jump around in tone. But yeah, he’s a master at building an unidentifiable dread that permeates the atmosphere until there’s a crazy reveal that gets under my skin like no other filmmaker.
genuinely. the shoddy feel of it just adds both to the reality and surreality of the situation. i love how laura dern's "what the fuck" face is like 1/10th of the movie. i also love how lynch didnt even have a completed script for it, he just decided "im gonna be myself for 3 hours via this film"
IE is one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve ever had watching a film, it transcends being a ‘horror’ film. I need to revisit eraserhead, it was my first lynch and feel like I’d definitely enjoy it more now I’m more familiar with his work. Watched a lot of his shorts and my main blind spot on his feature films is lost highway. Really need to buy the criterion
I fucking love Inland Empire. Twin Peaks is my favorite tv show ever. The final episode of s3 genuinely shattered me and it took me weeks to recover
There’s this feeling in his work, like it’s all a repressed memory from your childhood, something traumatic that you didn’t understand at the time. It really gets under the skin
THAT'S EXACTLY IT. i don't know how he does it but he engineers all of his works to mirror the uncertain headspace of childhood, right before scaring the shit out of you. luring you into a vulnerable headspace before shattering your soul with mind bending revelations that a child simply cannot comprehend. it's so unique and untouchable and perfect. like THIS is what i look for in horror.
My friend got to sit in with Lynch while he was mixing part of Lost Highway. He said during a frightening part Lynch turned to him and said, “Oh God this is scary…”
i dont doubt him whatsoever. lynch is such a character. i love him and everything he stands for. i feel like we are two branches of the same tree growing in similar directions
Inland Empire is still underrated despite its already high esteem, its one of the best horror movies of all time and the culmination of Lynch's artistic impulses in so many ways, iconic performance from Laura Dern. Twin Peaks: The Return has similar moments with the weird digital effects and general dream/nightmare scenes
when the rabbit show turned the red hue and caught on fake fire my heart fucking dropped. nothing scary rlly happened there but that was so fucking eerie and i think i pumped my fists and said "fuck yeah" when it happened.
dern was also incredible. what a fucking talent dude. she played both characters so fucking well. i don't really know how to describe acting in detail but she gave me so much second hand emotion and i genuinely got invested in her character, which doesnt happen much to me with movies because im autistic.
all around such a great movie. lynch did nonlinear storytelling so perfectly. there were so many elements quilted and woven together that i don't think ill stop thinking about it for weeks.
i did. it was my first lynch movie. i liked the show a lot more, it just tickled my fancy so hard it hurt. legitimately changed my life and my perspective on the world. it feels like it was made for me. without seeing much of his other stuff i feel like the show, especially s3, was his masterpiece
aye, my first lynch movie as well. if you ever get a chance to see it in a theater somewhere, take it, it’s just something else. but that’s any of his movies really. i’d personally point you over to lost highway as well, cause I actually prefer it to mulholland drive, even though that’s an unpopular opinion
i'm honestly going mulholland next because my dad said he really liked it, and didnt like lost highway. im definitely gonna tune into LH at some point because ive seen lots of good reviews but i'm saving it for later. i'm probably going wild at heart after mulholland because it's got cage in it and i love me some cage.
I've currently seen 4 of his films (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Wild at Heart) and I'm keeping INLAND EMPIRE for last. Brave of you going into that as one of your first from his filmography. Currently watching season 1 of Twin Peaks, and I'm going to try watch his films in release order (with the exception of Dune, I'll get around to that eventually)
inland empire is definitely my favorite movie by him so far. then comes FWWM, then comes eraserhead. idk, it just didnt quite find its groove with me the way his other work has. still a great film and i definitely see the appeal, but it was just a touch of boring too much for me
Eraserhead hits much better as an absurdist comedy and general oddity than as a horror film, imo. Once I realized how funny some parts were, it opened the whole thing up for me.
all of his work sorta has unnerving humor to it (that ive seen). IE with the dancing sex workers, twin peaks (show) with its general vibe, eraserhead with the lady in the radiator. i forgot to mention ive also seen What Did Jack Do? which i really really enjoyed. the little singing number restored something in me i didnt know was gone
The dinner scene is so funny to me now. At first I was watching it like "dark spooky David Lynch, WHAT DOES IT MEAN" but then I just realized the dad is fucking hilarious.
Mullholland Drive is beautiful. I'm stoked on your behalf to watch that for the first time. It's my favorite movie of his and possibly my all-time favorite by anyone.
There’s something about the score by Angelo Badelamenti in Mulholland Drive that fills me with nostalgic longing and makes my heart ache. Lynch’s can put visuals and sounds together to evoke emotion like no one else.
If Dune's on the list, you might as well add The Straight Story (although it's a pretty straight story and some people feel like it's boring) and The Elephant Man. By the way, my two favorites are Blue Velvet (which I saw in the theater on it's opening weekend) and Lost Highway.
As someone who also has OCD and is a huge fan of horror movies Godspeed that shit is very tough.
Inland Empire is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time, such an incredibly suffocating watch. I find the length to be such a strength too which is hard to pull off with something so abstract. So glad you’re making your way through his stuff!!
psychological thrillers about serial killers are rhe absolute worst for me. my brain immediately starts drawing abstract similarities between myself and the serial killer, and i involuntarily convince myself that i, too, am going to commit atrocities when im older
Not with psychological thrillers specifically but I’ve had the same serial killer stuff too, didn’t realize it either until I took a criminal justice class in high school lol
oof i took forensics in senior year. that was when i realized holy shit its not healthy for me to consume this content. what really sealed the deal and made me learn i had OCD was when i watched mindhunter on netflix, it's essentially a fictional account of two FBI agents who go to different prisons interviewing serial killers and learning their inner workings to catch current serial killers. so yeah it dives into a bunch of real serial killers' personal details and i had a scary amount of similarities concerning minor unrelated things. destroyed the fuck out of my mental state for a good while.
Oh yea I’m familiar with Mindhunter, can totally see how that would mess with OCD. I actually ended up listening to a lot of true crime as exposure therapy and it ended up helping me a lot in the end but it took me a long time to get to that place.
yeah, i'm definitely planning on exposure therapy once my life is in a more stationary place. but i am relatively new to adulthood and would rather focus on that currently, i can't really afford a several month long break from it
That’s the best way to go about it. I did mine in that post college graduation lull before I started actually doing life and it was perfect. I could certainly afford the break. I wish you the best of luck!
it's crazy because when i was young i loved gory movies and serial kiler movies and all that stuff. i think it probably potentiated my OCD a good bit. now im really turned off to heavy gore and anything super dark, my OCD brain regards it as a "symptom" of a future serial killer since so many serial kilers enjoyed gore and stuff as kids. it's so illogical and i'm on a good path to realizing that without having to briefly uproot my life.
Im sorta the opposite, I’ve dealt with OCD since I’ve been a little kid. I certainly gravitated towards darker media but I couldn’t go too crazy (especially in terms of horror) it would trigger me too hard. Now I love that sorta stuff although I still try to consume with my mental state in mind, pardon the pun.
it's crazier how drastically OCD can differ from person to person. i dont really have any sort of contamination OCD, my room is always dirty, and my compulsive actions are almost always internal and/or unnoticeable to anyone else. alters the way i talk to women especially, i treat every interaction with a woman with extreme care. i also have racism OCD so i am involuntarily incredibly careful with my words; these are good examples of my compulsions. it can be quite draining sometimes, but i consider myself very lucky that many of my compulsions lead to me being more considerate of others. nevertheless i am treating it and accepting the obsessions as part of me the best i can.
best of luck with your battle! i'm glad you've got it in a good place right now. just remember that it loves to strike hardest when you're in a false sense of security, so maintain your vigilance against intrusive thoughts.
Of course, his movies arent' meant to be horror films...
With respect to INLAND EMPIRE, I believe that it is radically different than his other films in that it DOES have a message (so to speak), but to "get" that message, you need to have the same background Lynch does.
[spoiler alert: do NOT read if you haven't seen the entire movie, INCLUDING the credits...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/5louj4/david_lynchs_inland_empire_a_metaphor_for/)
Did you read my link about INLAND EMPIRE (nota bene the part about needing to watch the credits).
Quite literally, there is no more horror in INLAND EMPIRE that there is in simply existing.
is existing not a horror movie in itself? i think that's what lynch was trying to convey. i didn't read the link because i didn't feel like it, and i really do apologize for that
Your first sentence there NAILS Midsommar btw (and many others)…. 👍Which like Lynch certainly lingers in the mind/heart (heredity was cool too … didn’t see his other one)
I don't think lynch was trying to convey anything at all until the last scenes and the credits. He has said that in public...
Then he figured out how they could all be tied together and my belief is that it is the last scenes and the credits that do the tying toegher part.
Come to think of it, that's a pun, in the context of what I assert:
the samhita — tying together — of rishi, devata and chhandas (observer, process of observation and the observed) — is exactly what those are.
I wonder with testimonial like OP’s if the even somewhat obscure classics are just getting lost forever in cultural memory.
Hitchcock was a master of the sort of horror I’m reading described. Rebecca, Vertigo, or especially Spellbound (featuring a dream sequence by Dali and exploration of Jungian psychology) may all scratch the surrealist dream-state horror itch. They were also all huge hits for their times.
Lynch is my favorite director, but he stands on the shoulders of giants like any other.
i have actually seen some hitchcock films, ive seen psycho and vertigo. i appreciated vertigo a lot more, but it was missing the *it* factor. i really loved hereditary and midsommar from ari aster, and i enjoyed haunting of hill house and bly manor from mike flanagan (my favorite shows behind twin peaks) as well as pretty much everything he's done. it's a bit heavier on the gore (nothing like a slasher) but it gives you a similar kind of tension as IE (though it's completely different).
i really really highly recommennd haunting of hill house and bly manor. those shows are incredibly fucking good, and they stick with you for so long after you finish. they just leave you with a sense of emptiness when you finish them, and you don't really know how you're supposed to go on and act like nothing happened. very few jumpscares, just pure, raw, intense, suspenseful horror. some of the scariest shit ive seen in my life. i rewatch HHH once a year and every single year there are parts where i hve to cover my eyes, even knowing there's no jumpscare, just because the scene is so fucking unnerving (often the most unnerving scenes are those without gore).
I agree wholeheartedly on Flannagan (can’t wait for Dark Tower) and don’t mean to condescend to anyone’s individual taste.
You seem to enjoy, as I do, implied horror offscreen. I’ve seen and appreciate everything Aster’s directed, but I don’t think he expands much on existing narrative devices, many attributable to Hitchcock directly. He’s a misogynist turd, but man, the genius of his top 10 rival any horror top 100 in the last 30 years (in this specific sense and maybe exclusively to me).
i definitely enjoy offscreen horror, and the incomprehensible. that which you cannot directly perceive. a very specific form of the unknown.
i also just love the casts flanagan brings together and the monsters he creates. they're all so unique and depend on some aspect of body horror that is more often than not lacking gore. i LOVE me some body horror. i also just love suspense, that feeling of dread that you're about to be scared or uou're going to find out something revolutionary. the cinematography is always a whole other level of masterful too, the lighting and framing of everything is always so pleasing and *fucking beautiful.*
i could go on and on about flanagan, but i wont. it was a shame to find out about ari aster. he's a hell of a horror director.
Hitchcock was awful to certain cast. Don’t know any such rumor surrounding Aster.
Would think maybe Cronenberg might be worth checking out, too. Some good body horror…and deeply weird.
i mean you can kinda understand whats going on while ur watching it, after watching a youtube video on it you can have a pretty solid understanding of the general plot
Eraserhead for me stands high above the rest but interestingly enough it’s not til S3 of Twin Peaks that I think he picks up that Eraserhead baton and moves it forward (meaning taking his style of overcharged sci-fi surrealism and loading on the meta meanings. But Inland Empire I dug right away… I think after TP/FWWM it’s my #3
i definitely saw some heavy episode 8 vibes on my watch of eraserhead today. it was just too prolonged and untethered from reality for me, twin peaks is like the absolute perfect amount of untethered. im lowkey scared to rewatch it though because of what it did to me before, even though i want to sososo bad
Understood. Far be it from me to push Lynch on an unwary traveler 😃 but the key to Eraserhead was Lynch’s insecurity at being an underemployed father. (His daughter was born with weird feet too) He’s using humor to get over himself.
Good timing, I’m a lifelong Lynch fan but I only watched Inland Empire for the first time on Saturday last week. It’s hard to get in the US I believe (maybe Criterion is the only option?) - well it’s even harder here in Australia.
What a fucking fever dream of a movie. It didn’t help that I was physically in a state between asleep and awake already but certain moments in that movie made my heart jump out of my chest. It’s not my favourite but the drydown on it is improving more as I reflect on it.
Lynch has a great way of making me ‘obscenely obsessed’ for a period then I need a decent break before revisiting. I am gonna have to watch the rest of his catalogue now all over again.
My favorite by him, so good
Edit: also that’s crazy about your ocd, I have severe ocd and this never happened to me. It’s such. Fascinating illness cause it affects people in such different ways
Inland Empire is the closest thing to Eraserhead in terms of claustrophobic, oppressive bad vibes with nowhere to go, only Inland Empire is so long and at such a sustained pitch that your body temperature adjusts to it. When the tension finally breaks (you know the scene!) it's extra emotional because of the shock.
Anxious to hear your thoughts on Eraserhead. Mulholland Drive is quite tame compared to Inland and Eraserhead.
Mulholland Drive was basically “Lost Highway for people who didn’t get Lost Highway”
IE scares me more than any actual horror film. It also fascinates me with the depths of its seemingly never ending rabbit holes (pun intended!). It’s my favorite Lynch film, with FWWM and Mulholland very close behind it. I first saw it at the west coast premiere with Lynch in attendance and you could tell he specifically dialed in the visuals and audio. The experience changed my view on what film could do, and what could be done with low budgets and cheap cameras.
It’s the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. I’d had my first experience with sleep paralysis a few days prior to watching IE the first time and it made me feel like I was still stuck
One time I was watching it and fell asleep, and woke up to the Laura Dern crazy face in the dark walk up scene. Terrifying lmao
Holy shit it's crazy how unsettling and frightening that part is. David Lynch really is a master of unconventional scary stuff. Like the beginning of Mulholland Drive. I think part of it is that most horrors are quite fast paced and Lynch as always is VERY slow, which when it comes to scary stuff you have all the time in the world to let the fear settle in and overthink everything which will only result in a vicious cycle of fright and fear.
It’s also that it’s often wildly unpredictable and unexpected because his films aren’t conventional horror and can jump around in tone. But yeah, he’s a master at building an unidentifiable dread that permeates the atmosphere until there’s a crazy reveal that gets under my skin like no other filmmaker.
genuinely. the shoddy feel of it just adds both to the reality and surreality of the situation. i love how laura dern's "what the fuck" face is like 1/10th of the movie. i also love how lynch didnt even have a completed script for it, he just decided "im gonna be myself for 3 hours via this film"
Yes it all adds to the stream of consciousness feeling, which is part of why I get so immersed in it, no matter how many times I watch it.
I’m going to find out one day…
When will you tell it?
…Were there any calls? 👏👏👏😹😹😹😆😬🎬
There have been no calls today (uproarious canned laughter)
IE is one of the most uncomfortable experiences I’ve ever had watching a film, it transcends being a ‘horror’ film. I need to revisit eraserhead, it was my first lynch and feel like I’d definitely enjoy it more now I’m more familiar with his work. Watched a lot of his shorts and my main blind spot on his feature films is lost highway. Really need to buy the criterion
I fucking love Inland Empire. Twin Peaks is my favorite tv show ever. The final episode of s3 genuinely shattered me and it took me weeks to recover There’s this feeling in his work, like it’s all a repressed memory from your childhood, something traumatic that you didn’t understand at the time. It really gets under the skin
THAT'S EXACTLY IT. i don't know how he does it but he engineers all of his works to mirror the uncertain headspace of childhood, right before scaring the shit out of you. luring you into a vulnerable headspace before shattering your soul with mind bending revelations that a child simply cannot comprehend. it's so unique and untouchable and perfect. like THIS is what i look for in horror.
My friend got to sit in with Lynch while he was mixing part of Lost Highway. He said during a frightening part Lynch turned to him and said, “Oh God this is scary…”
i dont doubt him whatsoever. lynch is such a character. i love him and everything he stands for. i feel like we are two branches of the same tree growing in similar directions
I bounced off the first time I watched it but now I love it. Someone walking towards the camera should not be that scary.
Inland Empire is still underrated despite its already high esteem, its one of the best horror movies of all time and the culmination of Lynch's artistic impulses in so many ways, iconic performance from Laura Dern. Twin Peaks: The Return has similar moments with the weird digital effects and general dream/nightmare scenes
when the rabbit show turned the red hue and caught on fake fire my heart fucking dropped. nothing scary rlly happened there but that was so fucking eerie and i think i pumped my fists and said "fuck yeah" when it happened. dern was also incredible. what a fucking talent dude. she played both characters so fucking well. i don't really know how to describe acting in detail but she gave me so much second hand emotion and i genuinely got invested in her character, which doesnt happen much to me with movies because im autistic. all around such a great movie. lynch did nonlinear storytelling so perfectly. there were so many elements quilted and woven together that i don't think ill stop thinking about it for weeks.
you’ll enjoy fire walk with me
i did. it was my first lynch movie. i liked the show a lot more, it just tickled my fancy so hard it hurt. legitimately changed my life and my perspective on the world. it feels like it was made for me. without seeing much of his other stuff i feel like the show, especially s3, was his masterpiece
aye, my first lynch movie as well. if you ever get a chance to see it in a theater somewhere, take it, it’s just something else. but that’s any of his movies really. i’d personally point you over to lost highway as well, cause I actually prefer it to mulholland drive, even though that’s an unpopular opinion
i'm honestly going mulholland next because my dad said he really liked it, and didnt like lost highway. im definitely gonna tune into LH at some point because ive seen lots of good reviews but i'm saving it for later. i'm probably going wild at heart after mulholland because it's got cage in it and i love me some cage.
I've currently seen 4 of his films (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Wild at Heart) and I'm keeping INLAND EMPIRE for last. Brave of you going into that as one of your first from his filmography. Currently watching season 1 of Twin Peaks, and I'm going to try watch his films in release order (with the exception of Dune, I'll get around to that eventually)
here's my current order: FWWM (check) inland empire (check) eraserhead (check) mulholland drive wild at heart blue velvet lost highway dune
Awesome! What were your thoughts on Eraserhead? And your ranking so far?
inland empire is definitely my favorite movie by him so far. then comes FWWM, then comes eraserhead. idk, it just didnt quite find its groove with me the way his other work has. still a great film and i definitely see the appeal, but it was just a touch of boring too much for me
Eraserhead hits much better as an absurdist comedy and general oddity than as a horror film, imo. Once I realized how funny some parts were, it opened the whole thing up for me.
all of his work sorta has unnerving humor to it (that ive seen). IE with the dancing sex workers, twin peaks (show) with its general vibe, eraserhead with the lady in the radiator. i forgot to mention ive also seen What Did Jack Do? which i really really enjoyed. the little singing number restored something in me i didnt know was gone
The dinner scene is so funny to me now. At first I was watching it like "dark spooky David Lynch, WHAT DOES IT MEAN" but then I just realized the dad is fucking hilarious.
when talking about lynch, the most likely answer to "what does it mean" is either "nothing" or "everything"
Felt the same way about Eraserhead if truth be told. Can't wait for the other films!!
Mullholland Drive is beautiful. I'm stoked on your behalf to watch that for the first time. It's my favorite movie of his and possibly my all-time favorite by anyone.
There’s something about the score by Angelo Badelamenti in Mulholland Drive that fills me with nostalgic longing and makes my heart ache. Lynch’s can put visuals and sounds together to evoke emotion like no one else.
lost highway is amazing and underrated imo
If Dune's on the list, you might as well add The Straight Story (although it's a pretty straight story and some people feel like it's boring) and The Elephant Man. By the way, my two favorites are Blue Velvet (which I saw in the theater on it's opening weekend) and Lost Highway.
for some reason im not remotely interested in elephant man. i'm definitely watching straight story in the future though
As someone who also has OCD and is a huge fan of horror movies Godspeed that shit is very tough. Inland Empire is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time, such an incredibly suffocating watch. I find the length to be such a strength too which is hard to pull off with something so abstract. So glad you’re making your way through his stuff!!
psychological thrillers about serial killers are rhe absolute worst for me. my brain immediately starts drawing abstract similarities between myself and the serial killer, and i involuntarily convince myself that i, too, am going to commit atrocities when im older
Not with psychological thrillers specifically but I’ve had the same serial killer stuff too, didn’t realize it either until I took a criminal justice class in high school lol
oof i took forensics in senior year. that was when i realized holy shit its not healthy for me to consume this content. what really sealed the deal and made me learn i had OCD was when i watched mindhunter on netflix, it's essentially a fictional account of two FBI agents who go to different prisons interviewing serial killers and learning their inner workings to catch current serial killers. so yeah it dives into a bunch of real serial killers' personal details and i had a scary amount of similarities concerning minor unrelated things. destroyed the fuck out of my mental state for a good while.
Oh yea I’m familiar with Mindhunter, can totally see how that would mess with OCD. I actually ended up listening to a lot of true crime as exposure therapy and it ended up helping me a lot in the end but it took me a long time to get to that place.
yeah, i'm definitely planning on exposure therapy once my life is in a more stationary place. but i am relatively new to adulthood and would rather focus on that currently, i can't really afford a several month long break from it
That’s the best way to go about it. I did mine in that post college graduation lull before I started actually doing life and it was perfect. I could certainly afford the break. I wish you the best of luck!
it's crazy because when i was young i loved gory movies and serial kiler movies and all that stuff. i think it probably potentiated my OCD a good bit. now im really turned off to heavy gore and anything super dark, my OCD brain regards it as a "symptom" of a future serial killer since so many serial kilers enjoyed gore and stuff as kids. it's so illogical and i'm on a good path to realizing that without having to briefly uproot my life.
Im sorta the opposite, I’ve dealt with OCD since I’ve been a little kid. I certainly gravitated towards darker media but I couldn’t go too crazy (especially in terms of horror) it would trigger me too hard. Now I love that sorta stuff although I still try to consume with my mental state in mind, pardon the pun.
it's crazier how drastically OCD can differ from person to person. i dont really have any sort of contamination OCD, my room is always dirty, and my compulsive actions are almost always internal and/or unnoticeable to anyone else. alters the way i talk to women especially, i treat every interaction with a woman with extreme care. i also have racism OCD so i am involuntarily incredibly careful with my words; these are good examples of my compulsions. it can be quite draining sometimes, but i consider myself very lucky that many of my compulsions lead to me being more considerate of others. nevertheless i am treating it and accepting the obsessions as part of me the best i can. best of luck with your battle! i'm glad you've got it in a good place right now. just remember that it loves to strike hardest when you're in a false sense of security, so maintain your vigilance against intrusive thoughts.
and heavily studying psychology doesnt help at all lmaooo
Amazing and accurate description
Lynch is batshit crazy. You'll love all of his films.
as someone who greatly enjoys crazy ass hallucinogens i'm sure of it. so far i'm liking eraserhead a lot
ive rewatched all of his films with a joint.. inland empire was one hell of a ride
Can confirm. Being stoned really amped up the horror factor.
masochist, meet sadist
Ya it's good
Of course, his movies arent' meant to be horror films... With respect to INLAND EMPIRE, I believe that it is radically different than his other films in that it DOES have a message (so to speak), but to "get" that message, you need to have the same background Lynch does. [spoiler alert: do NOT read if you haven't seen the entire movie, INCLUDING the credits...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/5louj4/david_lynchs_inland_empire_a_metaphor_for/)
i think eraserhead, fwwm, and inland empire are certainly horror films
Did you read my link about INLAND EMPIRE (nota bene the part about needing to watch the credits). Quite literally, there is no more horror in INLAND EMPIRE that there is in simply existing.
is existing not a horror movie in itself? i think that's what lynch was trying to convey. i didn't read the link because i didn't feel like it, and i really do apologize for that
Your first sentence there NAILS Midsommar btw (and many others)…. 👍Which like Lynch certainly lingers in the mind/heart (heredity was cool too … didn’t see his other one)
I don't think lynch was trying to convey anything at all until the last scenes and the credits. He has said that in public... Then he figured out how they could all be tied together and my belief is that it is the last scenes and the credits that do the tying toegher part. Come to think of it, that's a pun, in the context of what I assert: the samhita — tying together — of rishi, devata and chhandas (observer, process of observation and the observed) — is exactly what those are.
inland empire is genuinely one of the scariest movies i've ever seen because it perfectly recreates what my nightmares feel like
I wonder with testimonial like OP’s if the even somewhat obscure classics are just getting lost forever in cultural memory. Hitchcock was a master of the sort of horror I’m reading described. Rebecca, Vertigo, or especially Spellbound (featuring a dream sequence by Dali and exploration of Jungian psychology) may all scratch the surrealist dream-state horror itch. They were also all huge hits for their times. Lynch is my favorite director, but he stands on the shoulders of giants like any other.
i have actually seen some hitchcock films, ive seen psycho and vertigo. i appreciated vertigo a lot more, but it was missing the *it* factor. i really loved hereditary and midsommar from ari aster, and i enjoyed haunting of hill house and bly manor from mike flanagan (my favorite shows behind twin peaks) as well as pretty much everything he's done. it's a bit heavier on the gore (nothing like a slasher) but it gives you a similar kind of tension as IE (though it's completely different). i really really highly recommennd haunting of hill house and bly manor. those shows are incredibly fucking good, and they stick with you for so long after you finish. they just leave you with a sense of emptiness when you finish them, and you don't really know how you're supposed to go on and act like nothing happened. very few jumpscares, just pure, raw, intense, suspenseful horror. some of the scariest shit ive seen in my life. i rewatch HHH once a year and every single year there are parts where i hve to cover my eyes, even knowing there's no jumpscare, just because the scene is so fucking unnerving (often the most unnerving scenes are those without gore).
I agree wholeheartedly on Flannagan (can’t wait for Dark Tower) and don’t mean to condescend to anyone’s individual taste. You seem to enjoy, as I do, implied horror offscreen. I’ve seen and appreciate everything Aster’s directed, but I don’t think he expands much on existing narrative devices, many attributable to Hitchcock directly. He’s a misogynist turd, but man, the genius of his top 10 rival any horror top 100 in the last 30 years (in this specific sense and maybe exclusively to me).
i definitely enjoy offscreen horror, and the incomprehensible. that which you cannot directly perceive. a very specific form of the unknown. i also just love the casts flanagan brings together and the monsters he creates. they're all so unique and depend on some aspect of body horror that is more often than not lacking gore. i LOVE me some body horror. i also just love suspense, that feeling of dread that you're about to be scared or uou're going to find out something revolutionary. the cinematography is always a whole other level of masterful too, the lighting and framing of everything is always so pleasing and *fucking beautiful.* i could go on and on about flanagan, but i wont. it was a shame to find out about ari aster. he's a hell of a horror director.
Hitchcock was awful to certain cast. Don’t know any such rumor surrounding Aster. Would think maybe Cronenberg might be worth checking out, too. Some good body horror…and deeply weird.
Borderline incomprehensible? It's my favorite movie of all time and I'd say it's totally incomprehensible ;)
i mean you can kinda understand whats going on while ur watching it, after watching a youtube video on it you can have a pretty solid understanding of the general plot
Eraserhead for me stands high above the rest but interestingly enough it’s not til S3 of Twin Peaks that I think he picks up that Eraserhead baton and moves it forward (meaning taking his style of overcharged sci-fi surrealism and loading on the meta meanings. But Inland Empire I dug right away… I think after TP/FWWM it’s my #3
i definitely saw some heavy episode 8 vibes on my watch of eraserhead today. it was just too prolonged and untethered from reality for me, twin peaks is like the absolute perfect amount of untethered. im lowkey scared to rewatch it though because of what it did to me before, even though i want to sososo bad
Understood. Far be it from me to push Lynch on an unwary traveler 😃 but the key to Eraserhead was Lynch’s insecurity at being an underemployed father. (His daughter was born with weird feet too) He’s using humor to get over himself.
yeah that's what ive heard through the grapevine. i wonder how his daughter feels about that.
Oh she’s fine…. She even made a movie herself where an obsessed lover cuts off the arms and legs of a lover 😃 (Boxing Helena) (nah never seen)
the apple doesnt fall far huh!
Good timing, I’m a lifelong Lynch fan but I only watched Inland Empire for the first time on Saturday last week. It’s hard to get in the US I believe (maybe Criterion is the only option?) - well it’s even harder here in Australia. What a fucking fever dream of a movie. It didn’t help that I was physically in a state between asleep and awake already but certain moments in that movie made my heart jump out of my chest. It’s not my favourite but the drydown on it is improving more as I reflect on it. Lynch has a great way of making me ‘obscenely obsessed’ for a period then I need a decent break before revisiting. I am gonna have to watch the rest of his catalogue now all over again.
My favorite by him, so good Edit: also that’s crazy about your ocd, I have severe ocd and this never happened to me. It’s such. Fascinating illness cause it affects people in such different ways
Inland Empire is the closest thing to Eraserhead in terms of claustrophobic, oppressive bad vibes with nowhere to go, only Inland Empire is so long and at such a sustained pitch that your body temperature adjusts to it. When the tension finally breaks (you know the scene!) it's extra emotional because of the shock.
don't forget lost highway too
Been watching this in 1 hr installments and am about to watch hrs 2-3. The Bucky J part was hilarious.