Revisiting the Film That Holds the Key to the New <i>Twin Peaks</i>

Even watching it today, 25 years after it premiered at Cannes to a chorus of boos, it’s hard not to think of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as an intentional act of sabotage by David Lynch. The film was based on the TV series that the director had co-created with Mark Frost in 1990; it was canceled the following year when ratings plummeted and critics turned on it. But Lynch, who had largely stepped away from the show in its second season, said he couldn’t resist returning to the story with the film. He wanted to explore the final days of Laura Palmer, whose murder was the show’s central mystery, and dig into the contradiction of the beloved prom queen wrestling with unspoken darkness.

What Lynch ended up making was enough to destroy any notion thatcould still appeal to the kind of broad audience it had captured on ABC when it debuted. is abrasively surreal, includes scenes of shocking sex and violence, and barely devotes any time to the TV show’s core cast outside of Sheryl Lee (who played Laura) and Ray Wise (her father Leland). It was a box-office bomb and a critical disaster, one that signaled Lynch’s definitive move away from his slightly more accessible, narratively focused ’80s output (including and ) into more overtly bizarre territory (, ). But according to Lynch,who is now reviving for Showtime, is also the key to understanding what comes next.