Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.

At release, Fire Walk with Me was savaged by American critics and booed at Cannes, with the central complaint being that it failed both fans seeking closure on the series' cliffhangers and newcomers who needed the TV show as a prerequisite. A minority of defenders — mostly British critics and a handful of American dissenters — argued the film's unsparing portrait of Laura Palmer's suffering was precisely what made it valuable, and that hostility to it said as much about audiences as about Lynch. Decades on, popular reassessment has been kinder than the contemporary critical record, creating a notable gap between what reviewers wrote in 1992 and how the film is now regarded.