AllMovie

Appearing after all but the most dedicated Twin Peaks fans had given up on the series, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me had the misfortune of missing its moment by a few too many months. It also has the misfortune of not being particularly good and having a tendency to descend into incomprehensibility with a frightening regularity. A prologue featuring Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland as FBI agents never mentioned in the series starts the film off on an appropriately creepy note. Once it arrives at the town of Twin Peaks itself, however, the film begins to unravel pretty quickly, turning into a torturously slow, brutally detailed descent into the dark side of small town America. Lynch scores up some memorable set pieces here and there, but the whole endeavor reeks of self-parody. Lynch had already exhausted the same subject with Blue Velvet. As a companion to the Twin Peaks series, it's likely to satisfy no one, resolving nothing, creating a tone far-removed from the series, with only a fraction of the cast returning and one key player poorly replaced. As a result, Fire Walk With Me feels half-hearted and unnecessary, the work of a top director spinning his wheels.