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Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, Justin Theroux, Terryn Westbrook ... see more see more... , Julia Ormond , Peter J. Lucas , Grace Zabriskie , Ian Abercrombie , Diane Ladd , William H. Macy , Karolina Gruszka , Krzysztof Majchrzak , Mary Steenburgen , Nastassja Kinski , Laura Harring , Naomi Watts , Scott Coffey , Leon Niemczyk , Piotr Andrzejewski , Nae Yuuki

Cinema of the surreal icon David Lynch follows up the success of his critically acclaimed 2001 feature Mulholland Drive with this dark mystery, shot on a handheld Sony PD150 digital video recorder. It... read more read more... is the tale of an actress whose personality becomes increasingly fragmented as she delves ever deeper into her work for a high-profile filmmaker. Kingsley (Jeremy Irons) is a director looking to adapt for the screen a Polish gypsy folktale that was previously stalled when the two leads were viciously murdered. Having offered the female lead to devoted actress Nikki (Laura Dern), Kingsley warns her male co-star, Devon (Justin Theroux), to maintain his professional distance, as Nikki's husband (Peter J. Lucas) is known to be notoriously possessive. As the passionate co-stars quickly cross the line and become lovers, Nikki's slowly slipping sense of reality causes her to eventually become lost in her character while the mysterious story of a Polish couple unfurls, and a trio of giant stage-bound rabbits (voices of Naomi Watts, Scott Coffey, and Laura Harring) lounge around on the sofa and tend to their domestic duties. Shot over the course of two and a half years and without a formalized script, Lynch's hallucinogenic look at a doomed film project features all of the abstract imagery and strange symbolism that have long made the director a favorite of film fans who embrace his disorienting approach to unconventional storytelling. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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72% liked it

103 critics

R, 2 hr. 59 min.

Directed by: David Lynch

Release Date: September 6, 2006

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DVD Release Date: August 14, 2007

Stats: 4,799 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (4,799)

  • fb1664868775
    March 6, 2012
    fb1664868775
    A nightmare from the mind of David Lynch. Inland Empire is his most disjointed and fragmented which also makes it the most dreamlike. His startling images instantly strike different emotions in viewers. At 3 hours long, this surreal masterwork is not an easy watch and can be a fr... read moreustrating one but can be a rewarding one if in the right mindset. Laura Dern puts in a brave performance in the leading role.
  • fb100001048934982
    January 29, 2012
    fb100001048934982
    I am sad to say i could not make it through 'Inland Empire'. I don't understand David Lynch's use of dream-like imagery. I was lost in the story, an found the film way too creepy and unentertaining. Typical Lynch fans may find plenty to love, but everyone else should stay as far ... read moreaway from this one as possible.
  • SirPant
    February 15, 2011
    SirPant
    What I liked about Inland Empire is the mix of old and new Lynch. The digital camera work lends itself perfectly to Lynch's style but also we see returns to form, the whole Rabbits thing is classic Lynch. I liked it much more than Mullholland Drive and I really hope this is the d... read moreirection he is going in, although, he's been a bit quiet recently. I did get the feeling there was an element of goodbye in this film, I really hope I'm wrong though.
  • stevenecarrier
    February 12, 2011
    stevenecarrier
    I simply can't stand this movie. David Lynch has his moments for me (namely "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Dr") but "Inland Empire" is his most self indulgent and utterly meaningless film to date. Laura Dern is shockingly committed to this material, turning in one truly bizarre pe... read morerformance. No matter what Lynch says (or does not say) about the picture, "Inland Empire" is meaningless and the exact definition of artistic masturbation. (And believe me, I have given this film more chances that it deserves. I sat through it 3 times.)
  • ythelastman89
    February 11, 2011
    ythelastman89
    I think everything that made Mulholland Drive challenging is tripled here. Literally the entire movie is just a series of highly fantastical and subjective scenes. It's like watching someone's dreams on a videotape recording. A lot of the images make no sense because they're so p... read moreersonal to the character that we are looking in on. This is probably the most demented and creepy movie that David Lynch has ever made, but most people would probably go with Eraserhead in that respect. This is an extremely difficult movie to take in, mainly because it's just so unique and uncommon. It's hard to not just sit back and enjoy, but I feel that this is completely worth the time and effort.
  • fb619846742
    December 23, 2010
    fb619846742
    An arresting, hypnotic viewing experience concerning a promising actress (Laura Dern) who loses herself in the part of her biggest role ever, as she begins to fall in love with her co-star (Justin Theroux) while failing to discern as to what is the "performance" and what is her a... read morectual life. It sounds very confusing, and it is, and you can tell director David Lynch is having a field-day with his out-there weirdness, but somehow this movie is a near-masterpiece. Although there are instances where Lynch goes over-the-top just for kicks, there are several scenes in which you sense brilliance. Like "Mulholland Dr.", this is yet another cynical take on the film industry, as well as a worst case scenario of someone getting to emotionally attached to the role and losing one's grip on reality. A lot of the movie does not make much sense, but this is supposed to be the case. I for one had fun being lost and attempting to figure out just what the heck I walked into, just like Dern's character in the film - and I have to think this is what Lynch wants the viewer to experience. So for this reason, the film is indeed very, very well done.
  • hunterjt13
    December 6, 2010
    hunterjt13
    Dear David Lynch:
    I'm writing to let you know that I get it. I got it after Lost Highway, and you made Mullholland Drive just in case I didn't get it, but I assure you I did.
    I get that truth is not immutable. I get that you're a post-modernist. I get you blur t... read morehe line between imagination and reality. More to the point, I get that you see little difference between imagination and reality - that the lives we lead are as much in our heads as they are in objective reality, which you don't believe in. I get that epistemological explorations are interesting to you. I even get that female sexuality is a mystery to you, and even though this may be true for most men, you deserve credit for presenting it so starkly in your films.
    You see that everything you're doing in your films finds an understanding audience. But when I watch Inland Empire, the only new thing I see is a statement that our lives are over-determined by media. It seems like all you're doing is re-hashing old post-modern theory ... or simply fucking with us.
    Either way, I think you should move on. A filmmaker of your talents can show us what's post post-modernism. What comes next? Instead you're simply trying to tell us again that the traditional narrative is flawed, and it all makes me wonder if film is the best medium for your ideas. Why not write an essay? I think your ideas would be clearer and find a more receptive purchase, and I wouldn't feel like my brain had just been fucked into cookie batter, as it did after Inland Empire.
    Don't get me wrong: I liked it, but I couldn't help feeling that at this point your post-modernist views were more effective when they were more subtle, as in Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. At this point, I'm thinking you made The Straight Story just to prove that you were sane. At this point, you really need to stop jacking off to a picture of Jacques Derrida.
    Please, Mr. Lynch, return to subtle post-modernism and don't beat us over the head with the mutability of truth. If you're really searching for something to do, I'd love to know what happens in Twin Peaks after Agent Cooper turns evil. Does he kill Audrey? Please let him kill Audrey. It would make a great movie, and it would give Kyle MacLaughlin a reason to fix his hair.
    I don't normally make threats, but I feel I must in this case: if you don't stop it, I don't care if you do get Patricia Arquette to take her clothes off again (thank you, by the way), I will one-star the shit out of your next movie.
    Your faithful fan,
    Jim
  • garyX
    February 28, 2010
    garyX
    An actress gets a part in a new movie which is said to be "cursed" and finds the walls between fact and fiction start to blur to the point where she doesn't know whose life she is living any more. Trying to describe Inland Empire is like trying to describe a dream. You know you'l... read morel never be able to put it into words, and your feeble attempts to do so will be greeted with indifferent boredom. It makes Lynch's previous offerings Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway seem as inaccessible and incomprehensible as your average episode of Scooby Doo in comparison, and as such anyone unhappy with those films should do themselves a favour and steer well clear. I've never been a fan of Laura Dern, but the fact she appears in nearly every scene of this relentless 3 hour mindf**k is testament to her (previously unappreciated) talent. She is simply amazing. It also has probably THE best use of sound I have ever come across. I won't even try to pretend I understood it, but Lynch's endlessly inventive cine-nightmare had me transfixed from beginning to end. I must admit, I found the ending a little disappointing, but I don't really know what I was expecting from it. It's one of those films you experience with your gut rather than your head, and by the end my gut was telling me I'd just witnessed something special. Dark, complex, nerve jangling, spine tingling, startling, visually arresting, uncompromising, and above all, indescribable.
  • 366weirdmovies
    February 12, 2010
    366weirdmovies
    This wandering nightmare from David Lunch, with Laura Dern playing multiple roles, drifts around between half a dozen levels of surreality---including one with three giant bunnies who may be acting in a sitcom---but what appears to be the base level of reality involves an actress... read more taking a role in a remake of a cursed Polish film that ended in tragedy. At 3 hours, Lynch really could have used the advice of a "no-man" to cut out the fat and convince him to include only his best ideas, not just anything that happened to cross his mind as he free-associated the script. It's Lynch at his weirdest, most bombastic and self-indulgent, but that's not entirely a bad thing: a timid Lynch would be worse.
  • paulsandberg
    May 30, 2009
    paulsandberg
    ok, I knew coming in that, being a Lynch film, this wasn't going to be a "normal" film. What I witnessed was a film in which the boundaries of time and place were blurred past all relevence (perhaps the concept?).
    There are vignettes of brilliance - a simple scene from the "mov... read moreie" where the two main charactors "act" a scene that parellells their suspected romance - but then the film isn't really about that at all and veers into a series of totally non-connected (though they were, perhaps, supposed to) overlapping set pieces involving other people and other places that I guess were all supposed to be happening simultaneously - I had a brief thought that perhaps this was, in its own way, paying homage to "The Eternal Champion" series of Michael Moorcock; where different aspects of the same hero existed in several universes.

    And yet Laura Dern's charactor doesn't really seem to be connected to the Russian charactors at all, except that they too seem to be "caught" in something and have vague recollections of deja vu.

    There are some interesting camera shots and the use of lighting to kind of smear the screen, but I swear if I see one more long, drawn out scene of a maze of hallways (Ok, ok, I get it - rats in a maze!) I'm going to cut my eyeballs out.

    As usual with a Lynch production, you get absurd charactors and some really weird ones that seem to be walk-ons. As you wonder about what each is saying, or if there is any point to them at all (perhaps another message - there is no point to art, other than art itself).

    In the end the film circles back on itself as if nothing happened at all; a very existential view and perhaps the point after all in a film that was disturbing and too long by at least an hour.

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Critic Reviews

Geoff Pevere
May 4, 2007
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star

An amazing and unshakeable experience. Full Review

Liam Lacey
May 4, 2007
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail

A bucket of Lynchian leftovers, stirred slightly and left to ferment in the dark. Full Review

Terry Lawson
April 13, 2007
Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press

You may find Lynch's experimentalism and willful obscurity to be the work of a poseur, ultimately pointless drivel. I can understand that, but I think you would be wrong. Full Review

Tom Long
April 12, 2007
Tom Long, Detroit News

A can't-miss experience and likely one of the year's very best films. Full Review

Colin Covert
February 15, 2007
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Lynch's brilliant and bizarre films have often come to us as a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, but his latest is enshrouded with two layers of 'who cares?'

Walter V. Addiego
February 9, 2007
Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

A free-fall plunge through David Lynch's imagination, a curious and often astonishing place. The film is dazzling and bewildering in equal measure. Full Review

Steve Murray
February 8, 2007
Steve Murray, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

With Inland Empire, the whole thing feels stuck in Lynch's noggin. Full Review

Jonathan Rosenbaum
January 26, 2007
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Inland Empire is full of good and bad girls, but [Lynch] gives this obsession an interesting spin by having most of them played by the same actress. Full Review

Michael Wilmington
January 26, 2007
Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

While you suspect Lynch's digital video acumen will flower into something extraordinary in coming projects, this one's intermittently extraordinary at best. Full Review

Ann Hornaday
January 11, 2007
Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

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... Full Review

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  • David Lynch's latest movie, Inland Empire, was shot on tape or film?  Answer »
  • What actress links the following films: "Tess", "Cat People" (1982), "Paris, Texas", "Terminal Velocity", "One Night Stand" (1997), and "Inland Empire"?  Answer »
  • Which actor/actress links the movies "Eddie and the Cruisers", "The Philadelphia Experiment", "Streets of Fire", "The Virgin Suicides" and "Inland Empire"?  Answer »
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