Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

I’ve watched a lot of horror flicks over the years, but Fire Walk With Me is one of the few that I think really captures the essence of evil. A far cry from the weird and offbeat TV show that preceded it, Fire Walk With Me recounts the last living days of Laura Palmer, a tortured American teenage girl if there ever was one. It is not a movie for the faint of heart, and you should consider this a warning for the lengthy list of troubling subjects and material in this movie. If you do manage to brave this thoroughly unsettling movie, preferably after at least watching Twin Peaks, you’ll find a deeply sorrowful and empathetic tale that is more than just a bizarre blend of surrealism, off-kilter quirkiness, and homegrown horror.

If the goal of Twin Peaks was to slowly and eerily subvert the cutesy image of suburban domesticity, Fire Walk With Me is the ringing and piercing final shot into the dark heart underneath all that artifice, or at least it was until the show was eventually revived 25 years after its conclusion. In that light, Fire Walk With Me is also the agonizing and confounding blueprint for Twin Peaks’ eventual return, which borrowed heavily from the sensibilities of the film rather than the show’s original run, making it the most essential viewing to understand the entire arc of the series. Again, Fire Walk With Me can be a rough watch, but I think it’s one well worth the time and hardship. — Moises Taveras