Inland Empire
518 Media | Release Date: December 6, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
73
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon. Read full review
100
PremiereAaron Hillis
Inland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
David Lynch's first digital video, almost three hours long, resists synopsizing more than anything else he's done. Some viewers have complained, understandably, that it's incomprehensible, but it's never boring, and the emotions Lynch is expressing are never in doubt. Read full review
100
Film ThreatDon R. Lewis
While I did enjoy the ride I took with the film, after the lights came up I was just thrilled Lynch was allowed to create such a journey for us to go on. Imagine what the cinema world would be like if more great directors threw caution to the wind and followed their artistic vision. It's a world I'd like to see and I hope Lynch continues to pave the way. Read full review
100
EmpireDamon Wise
A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma, featuring a superb, multi-layered performance by Laura Dern. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
One of the few films I've seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse. Read full review
90
L.A. Weekly
It is Lynch's most experimental endeavor in the 30 years since "Eraserhead," that it will do nothing to draw new fans to the director's work and that, after two viewings, I cannot wait to see it again. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Inland Empire may be the most aggressively surreal feature film ever released to movie theaters in this country, and it's possibly close to the movie David Lynch carries around in his head. Read full review
83
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
Only David Lynch could make the incomprehensible so compelling. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Though this is familiar Lynch stuff, it is never dull, and I was often buttock-clenchingly afraid of what was going to happen next and squeaking with anxiety. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Those willing to give themselves up to Lynch's sensibilities will find a hypnotic and richly textural experience that challenges them to make their own connections through the imagery, echoes of repeated dialogue and metaphor. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
It may not look like anything he's done before, but Inland Empire joins "Mulholland" and the whatzit "Lost Highway" (1997) to form the strangest show-business triptych around. All three concern artists whose identities demand more than one body. The films give new meaning to the phrase "dual citizenship." Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleWalter Addiego
The film is dazzling and bewildering in equal measure. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Inland Empire is way, way beyond my powers of ratiocination. It's the higher math. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
David Lynch's Inland Empire left me grasping for the merest crumbs of comprehension. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
By the time Inland Empire, David Lynch's three-hour digital epic shot on a home video camera, takes you through its tour of the contents of the director's febrile imagination, it's probably the bunnies you'll most remember. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Over time, though, with films such as "Lost Highway" and, to a lesser extent, "Mulholland Drive," Lynch's movies became less personal and more private. Whatever he is working out in his new film, Inland Empire, it's beyond the reach of all but his idolators. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Inland Empire is so locked up in David Lynch's brain that it never burrows its way into ours. Read full review
50
VarietyJay Weissberg
Inland Empire may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Inland Empire is Lynch's most experimental film since "Eraserhead." But unlike that brilliant debut (or its two masterful successors, "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Dr."), it lacks concentration. It's a miasma. Cheap DV technology has opened Lynch's mental floodgates. Read full review
50
New York PostLou Lumenick
What is Inland Empire - which Lynch is understandably distributing himself - about? What is it trying to say? If you figure that out, let me know. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
Shot on grainy, often blown-out and distorted consumer-grade video, scored to a feedback distortion-heavy soundtrack that will be familiar to fans and tinnitus sufferers alike, and clocking in at one merciful minute under three hours, Lynch's much-anticipated follow-up to "Mulholland Drive" signals a hale swan-dive off the deep end, away from any pretense of narrative logic and into the purer realm of unconscious free association. I found myself pining for "The Elephant Man," but that's just me. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
Ultimately, Inland Empire left me angry at David Lynch, but it was the kind of intimate anger you feel when disappointed by someone you love. If you can tolerate its lack of narrative cohesion, Lynch's film will continue to reward you with visual and auditory surprises right up till the end. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
If anything, it's worth watching as yet another example of Lynch's extraordinary collaboration with Dern. It may be overstating things to call her performance heroic, but it's nothing if not brave, as she dares to embody Lynch's most brutal impressions of Hollywood -- not as a dream factory, but as the place where dreams come to die. Read full review
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