this movie is an INK BLOT

Rating: 5/10 (15 February 2006)

This movie is in IMDb's top 250 list, and it shouldn't be. There are many movies that I disagree with being on that list, but I can start to understand why they're there. For starters, they're movies with coherent plots that don't require "clues" from the director himself to understand.
I first saw this movie about a year and a half ago, the plot was so unnecessarily twisted and the ending so unresolved and incomprehensible that I just assumed that I had missed something along the way, and didn't bother with this again for a year and a half. Well, this movie is so highly regarded, I figured I'd better be fair and give this another shot. This time there was no confusing it, I was left with violent feelings toward the director. Make that FIVE hours of my life David Lynch has stolen.
People who defend this movie claim it has one of the most intricate, multi-faceted story lines ever, and that that's the beauty of the movie, the symbolism and all that crap. Had the director not given you those 10 clues, would you have figured it out yourself? Well if you did, then that's your version of the story, and chances are, you're wrong. There are many movies that are open-ended and left to the viewer to interpret, but the difference here is that this ENTIRE movie is open, not just the ending. You might as well let people write their own scripts if it's gonna be like that. That's like showing an inkblot to people, only the mentally deranged will declare that black blotch a masterpiece.
Any movie that requires external intervention to even start to grasp meanings behind it is the result of a poor effort. Your movie has failed if it can't stand up on its own, and instead, relies on its viewers to take a trip to the fourth dimension in search of answers and return sweating and out of breath with the most convoluted explanations of symbolism. I think it's safe to say that your movie is reaching a bit if we need to do that.
You know what, all arguments are moot when we consider the fact that this movie was the result of a failed pilot for ABC. When ABC declined to pick this up for a series, David Lynch then went back a year later and added more scenes and turned it into a movie. What we're left with is not some grand idea or vision that was meticulously planned out, no, this piece of crap is nothing more than what was able to be SALVAGED from his original 8 million dollar failed effort. And people are calling this a masterpiece...
This reminds me of another institution in our culture in which non-independent thinkers disregard facts, or the lack thereof, to be in accordance with what the masses are telling them to believe.