The prospect of a movie tying up the world of Twin Peaks ^[1] following its ratings-driven implosion and apocalyptically open-ended finale offered a shot at critical and commercial redemption to everyone involved. Instead, David Lynch filmed a prequel, one that could only end in the brutal rape and murder of Laura Palmer, the mysterious crime that set the series moving. Moreover, a prequel that relegated Agent Dale Cooper, the show’s most popular character, to a strange aside featuring David Bowie, and took an hour to even introduce the residents of Twin Peaks. This opening, setting a more immediately paranoid tone against the show’s aw-shucks surrealism, follows Chris Isaak and Kiefer Sutherland as they investigate the murder of a drifter named Teresa Banks, a process that leads them to dancing cousins, gruff waitresses, asshole local cops, lipstick graffiti, and an even more haggard than usual Harry Dean Stanton. When the film finally arrives in Twin Peaks and Angelo Badalamenti‘s iconic title song ambles onto the soundtrack, it plays as a tremendously dark joke, the relief of getting to what we all came for barely masking the awful reality of what that actually is. What follows is the most terrifying hour and a half in American cinema, David Lynch’s suburban Inferno. – Slant Magazine ^[2]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQtm1eznrtU

(Jeg skriver under på hvert eneste ord Mark Kermode sier her – ikke minst vedrørende Angelo Badalementi ^[3]s musikk og Sheryl Lee ^[4]s elektriske rolleprestasjon.)