Movie Info
Movie Name: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Studio: New Line Cinema
Genre(s): Drama/Mystery/Suspense
Release Date(s): May 16, 1992 (Cannes Film Festival)/August 28, 1992 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
The all-American twenty-something teen who is into drugs and prostitution
The FBI is on the trail of a killer who is stalking the Northwest of the United States. As Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) finds himself drawn into the investigation, a girl named Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is realizing what is going on around her. She appears to live a perfect life with her father Leland (Ray Wise) and her mother Sarah (Grace Zabriskie). Her nightmares of a man called BOB (Frank Silva) who comes through her window might not be a dream at all and something far darker. Laura is headed down a dangerous path and not even her friend Donna Haywad (Moira Kelly), her boyfriend Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), or her secret lover James Hurley (James Marshall) can help her.
Oh Killer BOB…you are so terrifying
Written and directed by David Lynch (with additional writing by Robert Engels), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a prequel to the groundbreaking David Lynch TV series which aired from 1990-1991. Following Lynch’s Wild at Heart from 1990, the movie was released to critical pans and fared poorly at the box office. The movie gained a cult following over the years and received a remastered release by the Criterion Collection (Criterion #898).
I love Twin Peaks, but I’m not going to pretend that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a great movie. I saw it soon after it was released on video and wasn’t very impressed. Twin Peaks was one of the first series to really rely heavily on viewers knowing every aspect of every episode and pre-DVD and streaming that was often difficult. Rewatching Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me doesn’t change my opinion of the film very much, but I do love Lynch and Twin Peaks.
Yeah…I hate it when my dad busts me partying and kills me
Twin Peaks was just a complete oddity. The show took what seemed like a reasonably normal plot (a girl found murdered in a small town) and turned it into a really bizarre tale that the average viewer wasn’t ready for. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me shows what led up to Laura Palmer’s murder and tries to smooth some of the plot points by streamlining the timeline of the TV series. It works for fans of the series, but for the layman, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me almost plays a like a train wreck with strange cameos and loose ends (that the series tied up).
The other problem is that the movie parred down some of the extensive cast of the series. Sheryl Lee, Dana Ashbrook, and James Marshall returned as the world’s oldest teens, but Sherilyn Fenn and Lara Flynn Boyle did not participate (Flynn’s character was recast with Moira Kelly). Ray Wise and his alter ego Killer BOB played by Frank Silva remain creepy. There are cameos by regulars Mädchen Amick and Eric Da Re which seem forced in (Kyle MacLachlan also feels like he was kind of written in because he was expected) and a ton of other actors (some regulars and some new) like David Bowie, Miguel Ferrer, Heather Graham, Chris Isaak, Harry Dean Stanton, Kiefer Sutherland, and David Lynch himself as Bureau Chief Gordon Cole.
Alas poor Laura, we barely knew you….
The movie does maintain the dreamy world of Twin Peaks and that is good. It does fit with the mythos, but it feels like a lot of the world is missing since it primarily focus on Laura who was dead from the start of the series. Scenes from the Red Room were always a highlight of the series and continue to be here.
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is pretty indicative of Lynch and that isn’t a bad thing. Unfortunately, it feels like a weaker Lynch film because he has the constrains of following the lines of the series. Despite this, I can also see a lot of my favorite Lynch film Mulholland Dr. already surfacing in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me…and if that is the price of admission, I’d gladly pay it and enjoy a nice piece of cherry pie. Lynch followed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me with Lost Highway in 1997.
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