Lost Highway
October Films | Release Date: February 21, 1997 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Dallas ObserverAndy Klein
His most thoroughly surreal work since Eraserhead, this two-hour-plus fever dream is more of one piece than Fire Walk with Me and less desperate and jokey than Wild at Heart. Read full review
80
EmpireChristopher Hemblade
This is delightfully bonkers; an eerie and edgy outpouring that makes Twin Peaks look like Moonlighting. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
It's a weird movie, in that spooky/sicko, deadpan way that Lynch's movies always are, and it's guaranteed to repel anyone who likes entertainment wrapped in tidy resolutions and optimistic fade- outs. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Properly speaking, this isn't a movie with characters but with figures, each of them as overblown as a plastic inner tube. Read full review
70
The New YorkerMichael Sragow
The first half of this 1997 movie suffers from abstraction. Still, it's a compelling erotic nightmare. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Lost Highway has scattered moments of Lynch's poetry, but the film's ultimate shock is that it isn't shocking at all. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Lost Highway is unusually bizarre even for this atypical director. Co-written by Barry Gifford, the film ventures deeper into the nearly psychotic supernatural than any feature Lynch has previous overseen. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Although uneven and too deliberately obscure in meaning to be entirely satisfying, result remains sufficiently intriguing and startling to bring many of Lynch's old fans back on board for this careening ride. Read full review
60
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
Lost Highway, an elaborate hallucination that could never be mistaken for the work of anyone else, finds Mr. Lynch echoing the perversity of "Blue Velvet," the earlier film of his that this most closely resembles. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
In Lost Highway, David Lynch dabbles in spooky, chilly implication and a sort of hip incoherence. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Beautifully made but emotionally empty, it exists only for the sensation of its provocative moments. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The film actually deserves four stars for its imaginative style and astonishing suspense, zero stars for its shameless exploitation of violent shocks and loveless sensuality. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
David Lynch's eye-popping imagery is buried under an avalanche of self-indulgence. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyManohla Dargis
It's a soulless and dull bit of showmanship, but it sure sounds profound. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Lynch, who penned the screenplay with novelist Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart), seems to be attempting to capture not just a sense of place and time (it never works -- Lost Highway is wholly, irrevocably, out of place and without any linear time or time line to speak of), but also a sense of madness. Read full review
50
NewsweekJack Kroll
In Lost Highway, reality has become a dream. But Lynch has forgotten how boring it is listening to someone else's dream. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It's a shaggy ghost story, an exercise in style, a film made with a certain breezy contempt for audiences. Read full review
50
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Here, Lynch has traded some of his disturbing originality for noir formula and schticky weirdness. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
A feature-length Twilight Zone episode, filtered -- not entirely successfully -- though the sensibilities of David Lynch and his Wild at Heart collaborator, Barry Gifford. Read full review
40
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
A slow, ponderous, ultimately unsuccessful exercise in cerebral nihilism. Read full review
30
SlateDavid Edelstein
Lost Highway, David Lynch's first movie in five years, is a virtuoso symphony of bad vibes. Read full review
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