Film Review - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

I was a fan of David Lynch's Twin Peaks TV series before I knew much about his films but when I did get into the movies I was naturally eager to get to grips with this one, even if it was a prequel rather than a follow-up to the show's compound cliffhanger.


Sadly, Fire Walk with Me only falls slightly short of simply trolling the Twin Peaks fandom. Firstly, it largely settles for simply showing a lot of what was told in the TV series anyway, especially regarding Laura Palmer. Secondly, Lynch's fertile imagination was never going to allow a typical prequel and the film often wanders off into tangiential territory - it's ten times weirder than the show ever was.

All of which was possibly intentional. From Blue Velvet, the critical success of the first season of Twin Peaks and then Wild at Heart's controversial Palme d'Or win Lynch was coming close to being a mainstream figure as he had been before accepting Dune; it's not impossible Fire Walk with Me was effectively an attempt to get both major studios and Twin Peaks' vocal fandom to give him peace while he returned to arthouse territory.

That's perhaps a little far-fetched and it hardly excuses the bitty, uneven quality of Fire Walk with Me anyway. As ever good ideas bubble out all over the place but the thing is far too fractured; it's not a strong enough film in its' own right and it doesn't actually add a lot to the Twin Peaks series. A lot of the individual scenes are very good but nothing really ties it together into a single cohesive film. 

Sheryl Lee is also woefully exposed trying to carry a whole film, especially matched with Moira Kelly, 11th hour replacement for Lara Flynn Boyle. Chris Isaak does much better (surprisingly, moreso considering his role was obviously a similarly desperate creation when Kyle MacLachlan scaled back his participation) but a lot of good actors go to waste elsewhere and the high-billed guest stars like David Bowie and Jurgen Prochnow have mere cameos that are more distracting than anything else. Overall while it's occasionally a disturbing and inventive film it's frustrating to watch whether you approach it as a convert or a novice.