Mulholland Dr.
Universal Pictures | Release Date: October 12, 2001 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
34
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Slant MagazineEd Gonzalez
Mulholland Drive is a haunting, selfish masterpiece that literalizes the theory of surrealism as perpetual dream state. Read full review
100
EmpireSimon Braund
A bone fide masterpiece. An erotic, deeply unsettling, darkly comic journey through the subconscious city of night. Read full review
100
Total FilmKevin Harley
Alluring and unnerving, Lynch’s horror-show reminds us how much cinema misses him. Watts is electric, too. Read full review
100
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Lynch's Hollywood is a grand old girl, but she's one with some very treacherous curves. To trace the contours of her sensuality, you need a camera as sensitive as a set of fingertips. Lynch's is. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Like "Memento," Mulholland Drive is an amnesiac noir in the tradition that goes back to "Spellbound" and "Somewhere in the Night." Read full review
100
New Times (L.A.)Gregory Weinkauf
While this road may contain too many potholes -- and plotholes -- to sustain an even ride, there are moments of greatness scattered throughout to remind us why Lynch is vital and why the French think he's so nifty. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Mulholland Drive is as brilliant and disquieting as anything Lynch has ever done. It is psychotically lucid, oppressively strange, but with a powerfully erotic and humanly intimate dimension that Lynch never quite achieved elsewhere. It is a fantasia of illusion and identity, a meditation on the mystery of casting in art as in life: the vital importance of finding the right role. Read full review
100
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A genuinely ominous and suspenseful thriller. Read full review
100
SlateDavid Edelstein
Mulholland Drive isn't a "puzzle" like "Memento," in which the pieces (sort of) fit together. There are some pieces here that will never fit -- except maybe in Lynch's unconscious. And yet -- and yet -- this distinctly Hollywood nightmare makes a deeper kind of sense. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
For film buffs and Lynch fans, this is a glorious high. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is a movie to surrender yourself to. If you require logic, see something else. Mulholland Drive works directly on the emotions, like music. Read full review
100
L.A. WeeklyManohla Dargis
Not just everything you want in a David Lynch movie, but damn near everything else you want in ANY movie. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Likely as not, these things mean nothing in a conventional plot sense, but as powerful images, as pictures from a dreamlike world, they are unforgettable. And that, David Lynch would probably say, is exactly the point. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Watts and Harring even turn out to be the hottest Hollywood couple of 2001. The plot slides along agreeably as a tantalizing mystery before becoming almost completely inexplicable, though no less thrilling, in the closing stretches--but that's what Lynch is famous for. It looks great too. Read full review
100
Mr. ShowbizMichael Atkinson
Amid the chaos of this marvelous, uncategorizable film squirms one of the year's best performances.
100
The New York TimesStephen Holden
By surrendering any semblance of rationality to create a post-Freudian, pulp-fiction fever dream of a movie, Mr. Lynch ends up shooting the moon with Mulholland Drive. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It's surreal, erotic, creepy, frustrating, absorbing, transporting and torturous in the way only a Lynch film can be. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Corliss
Viewers will feel as though they've just finished a great meal but aren't sure what they've been served. Behind them, the chef smiles wickedly. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
The movie, at two and a half hours, retains much of the unhurried suspense -- the careful cultivating of our patience, of our narrative loyalty -- that is bred by the best TV.
90
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go. Read full review
90
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Thrilling and ludicrous. The movie feels entirely instinctual. The rest is silencio. Read full review
88
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
A dizzying - sometimes frustrating - marvel of moviemaking instinct and ingenuity. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It just requires an open mind, a love of film and a willingness to dream. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Rapt and beautiful and absorbing. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
An intriguingly mysterious, self-reflexive ode to the dream factory, it's one of Lynch's most satisfying films. Read full review
80
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Lynch's new movie, Mulholland Drive, is a trip and a half: It's like playing Twister and Scrabble simultaneously while high on LSD. Oh, and it's dark out. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
It will frustrate viewers who like stories to make instant sense, but fans of provocative puzzles will have mind-teasing fun. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
No classic like "The Big Sleep," another famously impossible-to-follow Los Angeles thriller. But for those willing to hang on for dear life, Lynch makes it worth their while. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleEdward Guthmann
Exhilarating not only for its dreamlike images and fierce, frequently reckless imagination but also for the fact that it got made (and released) at all. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeJay Carr
It's flawed, but it's also rich. And how many films make you feel that you and the filmmaker are following the course of a dream?
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
It's a lush, lovely dreamscape of a movie, steeped in familiar vernacular (film noir), yet capable of shooting off in totally unfamiliar, surreal directions. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Lynch does "explain" what's happening via a plot twist two-thirds of the way through "Drive," which will satisfy you (as it did me) or leave you asking, "Is that all there is?" Read full review
70
Film ThreatChris Gore
There's a lot to enjoy, and plenty of potential, but none of it pays off. So we're left with what amounts to some very clever experimental cinema in the Lynch vein. Which, if you think about it, isn't all that bad. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
As riveting as it may be, his film is a total shaggy-dog story. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Mulholland Drive is an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Watching this surrealist silliness, I would have welcomed the sight of a geezer on a riding mower.
50
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Relax, sit tight, and enjoy the ride. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
Lynch needs to renew himself with an influx of the deep feeling he has for people, for outcasts, and lay off the cretins and hobgoblins and zombies for a while. Mulholland Drive is the product of David Lynch, Inc. Read full review
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