Thirty years on, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is still the film that haunts me the most. I can feel it scratching behind my eyes, screaming in my ears and shrieking at my soul. Consciously, I’m not thinking about it, but my subconscious processes David Lynch’s 1992 prequel to his TV series Twin Peaks, constantly. The film is an endurance test, horrific, relentless, remorseless. I feel nothing after I have watched it and everything before I watch it again.
To recap, Fire Walk With Me is about the last seven days of Laura Palmer, the dead girl wrapped in plastic, only seen in flashback in the original show. The girl who was abused by her father and then murdered by him. Lynch said he wasn’t done with the show and was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions. The critics hated it and the public stayed away as the film was several thousand shades darker than the series.
There have been some sublime commentaries about Fire Walk With Me. David Foster Wallace wrote at length regarding the theme of evil in David Lynch’s films and Martha Nochimson’s book The Passion of David Lynch tackles the film with incredible insight and authority. Don’t expect the same level of criticism in this article, this is instead more about my personal relationship with a film that I’ve known for three decades as a punter and roughly half of that time as a film critic.
The phrase I often return to in certain reviews is a quote from Lynch’s 1997 movie, Lost Highway. When Fred Madison is questioned by the police he says, “I like to remember things my own way.” When pressed by one of the officers to explain what he means, he goes into more detail, “How I remember them. Not necessarily how they happened.”
This is the ambiguity I like to operate on when dealing with any of Lynch’s films, but especially Fire Walk With Me.
My visceral experience of the film and the psychological imprint it has seared on my brain is far more interesting to me than trying to decipher Lynch’s intentions. Like Fred Madison, I believe I haven’t trawled the internet looking for answers in fan pages or websites… but I can’t be sure. I half remember reading The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer in the early 90s… but I only remember a fraction of that. I am certain that I watched the entire second season of Twin Peaks when my friends all fell by the wayside when the show threaten to eat itself until Killer BOB possessed Dale Cooper and smashed his head into a mirror.
Unlike Lynch, I don’t practice transcendental meditation, fully grasp quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity to transport myself back to 1992 and meet my 20-year-old self. I certainly can’t fold space. I like to think I watched it in some legendary London fleapit, but it may have been on VHS a few months after the fact. I can’t fully recall. I may have seen it again on television late at night a few years later but my main recollection is owning it on DVD at the turn of the millennium. This 8-year hiatus was long enough for me to remember I had thought highly of it, but also too long a time to remember just how terrifying it was.
The mind is a great healer but also the greatest deceiver. Watching any David Lynch film is a nerve-wracking experience. I never enjoy the process; my guts are in knots and my body feels tense throughout. No one gives the air of menace to inanimate objects quite like Lynch. No one films the darkness with such unimaginable depths. Every dark corner is an abyss or a gateway with Lynch. You can reach into the Lynchian dark and shake hands with evil itself. I’d forgotten just how evil Fire Walk With Me was.
No one gives the air of menace to inanimate objects quite like Lynch. No one films the darkness with such unimaginable depths.
Yet the most frightening moments in Fire Walk With Me are in the daytime. There is no respite for Laura Palmer. I’d forgotten that when she returns home during the day that she finds Killer BOB leering, crouching, festering at her dresser with that razor blade grin pinned across his face. I’d forgotten the volume of Laura’s screams, the abject terror as she runs from the house, the hysteria, the blind panic of a girl who has no safe haven. I’d forgotten that it is her father who leaves the house, not Killer BOB. I’m not ashamed to say I had to turn the television fully off rather than pause it. I left my house in full daylight to walk it off. I had to finish watching it a couple of days later after checking to see if Killer BOB was lurking at the foot of my bed.
A couple of years later in a film class, probably near Halloween, my students asked what was the film that frightened me the most. As a kid I would have told them Alien, the thought of being fellated by an anchariid was horrendous. A few years on from that I would have said The Exorcist, the subliminal flash of the demon’s/father’s face stayed in my mind’s eye for weeks. But at that moment in time it was without question Fire Walk With Me.
They wanted to see for themselves. I did warn them.
The perverse joy of watching films vicariously through the eyes of others is intoxicating. I felt my own sheer terror amplified through their emotional contagion. When another dead girl, Teresa Banks has her nail bent back and a square of paper retrieved by FBI agents it is seen in an extreme close up. I could feel everyone wince in that moment. In that moment they knew this film wasn’t fucking around. Sometimes you realise some films are for adults and like many of Lynch’s characters you cross a dangerous threshold into adulthood.
When that screening finished there was silence. Fire Walk With Me is all volume and when it ends it takes everything from you. I may have said something smug like “I told you so” but I can’t be sure. We spoke about the nature of abuse, coercive control (it didn’t have that title back then) and the relentless level of trauma Laura experiences. We questioned whether the more fantastical elements of the film were Laura’s way of insulating herself from the horrors of incest. We realised that the angel at the end of the film extending her hand and Laura’s tears of relief are needed to allow yourself to breath again.
And remember Sheryl Lee’s incredible operatic performance as Laura and prepare for the next time it has to be endured.