73
Metascore
25 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100TV Guide MagazineKen FoxTV Guide MagazineKen FoxIn the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.
- 100PremiereAaron HillisPremiereAaron HillisInland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it.
- 90The New York TimesManohla DargisThe New York TimesManohla DargisOne of the few films I've seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.
- 88Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversMy advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on.
- 70New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinInland Empire is way, way beyond my powers of ratiocination. It's the higher math.
- 50Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerChristian Science MonitorPeter RainerOver time, though, with films such as "Lost Highway" and, to a lesser extent, "Mulholland Drive," Lynch's movies became less personal and more private. Whatever he is working out in his new film, Inland Empire, it's beyond the reach of all but his idolators.
- 50Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanInland Empire is so locked up in David Lynch's brain that it never burrows its way into ours.
- 50VarietyJay WeissbergVarietyJay WeissbergInland Empire may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky.
- 50Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanInland Empire is Lynch's most experimental film since "Eraserhead." But unlike that brilliant debut (or its two masterful successors, "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Dr."), it lacks concentration. It's a miasma. Cheap DV technology has opened Lynch's mental floodgates.
- 50New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickWhat is Inland Empire - which Lynch is understandably distributing himself - about? What is it trying to say? If you figure that out, let me know.