Inland Empire chronicles the psychological deterioration of an actress (Laura Dern) who finds herself increasingly unable to distinguish between her real life and the fictional world of her latest film, a remake of a cursed German production called On High in Blue Tomorrows. The most recent—and possibly final—feature film by consummate American auteur David Lynch, Inland Empire continues Mulholland Dr.’s excavation of cinema’s psychic underbelly. Originally conceived as a series of experimental digital shorts, Inland Empire is a hyper-textual collage of sinister hypnotists, morose prostitutes, and anthropomorphic rabbits that evolves into a moving, terrifying whole much greater than the sum of its enigmatic parts. Radiating secret meaning and free-floating menace, Inland Empire is a lucid nightmare and a cinephile’s dream.
