Even for David Lynch this is pretty disturbing

preppy-3

A prequel to the cult TV series "Twin Peaks". It chronicles the last week in the life of teenager Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). She's beautiful and popular...but there's a lot of disturbing things happening with her that people know nothing about. In the TV series it was hinted at or talked about--in this movie it's in your face and pretty disturbing. Also the movie has bits and pieces showing the residents of the town that because regulars on the series.

This movie had problems. The original cut was 5 hours long (!!!) and was cut down to 135 minutes. A lot of peoples subplots were reduced or eliminated entirely. It was booed when it played at the Cannes Film Festival and died at the box office here in the U.S. I can see why people didn't like this. It's dark, vicious, cruel and there's barely a let-up. Lee is in practically the entire film and she's just superb. She had an extremely difficult complex role which involved plenty of nudity, sex, drug taking and abuse. Her acting is so good it's hard to just shrug this movie off. Ray Wise as her father Leland matches her.

DEFINITE SPOILER!!!! He's basically raping his daughter while possessed by an evil spirit called BOB. BOB is only in him at certain times. You literally see Wise's face and expression change when he's possessed or going back. That's gotta be hard but Wise pulls it off. END SPOILER!!!!

The entire cast is good too--especially Dana Ashbrook and James Marshall. I loved it at first. Lynch keeps throwing images and bizarre dialogue at you and giving you just enough to figure it. But, halfway through, there's a bar sequence that goes on far too long and is extremely unpleasant. After that I started to get bored and disgusted. Lynch never stops and when it ends I felt drained. The acting, directing, music and everything is great here--but the dark tone and constant negativity really wore me down. I DO recommend it though--in a way. It challenges you and doesn't treat the audience like a bunch of idiots. How many movies can you say that about?

"Wanna hear about our specials? We don't have any!"

score 7/10

preppy-3 5 July 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1905208/