Movie Review: Lost Highway

Thank you, David Lynch, for providing me with nightmare fuel for the rest of my life. I don't think I can count just how many times I screamed out "WHAT THE (miscellaneous swear words)" at the top of my lungs whilst watching this. However, everything else aside, this movie is one that I will not forget for a long, long, long time.

I am a massive fan of David Lynch. And being a massive fan of David Lynch I know that all of his movies are at the same time similar to each other and completely different to each other. And Lost Highway is simultaneously undoubtedly Lynchian and somewhere where Lynch has never gone before.

I didn't understand Lost Highway. Not even after reading all of the theories and the Wikipedia summary. And, I mean, why should I? I think that in today's culture where everything myst have symbolism and significance, people get bogged down with trying to interpret everything. And as David Lynch has proved with films such as Mulholland Drive, understanding 100% what the film is about is not the point. Lost Highway perfectly toes the line between making no sense and a lot of sense.

This movie scared the living daylights out of me. I'm not usually one to scare easily and have almost never been deeply terrified by a movie. And even when I have, it's never really been in that weird, satisfyingly adrenaline-filled, startling way. But for some reason, the tense, breakneck aura of Lost Highway did something to my brain that no other movie has ever done to my brain before. I was literally pressing myself backwards against the wall out of fear. But it's not your traditional blood-gore-jump-scare kind of fear. It's that specific kind of fear which builds in your mind and seeps through your brain the entire time you're watching the movie, and afterwards too - the type that is so eponymous of David Lynch's movies.

Unease is quite literally painted over the entire movie. That classic neo-noir keying, the music, the stretches of seemingly never-ending highway at night, the cabin burning down backwards, the mysterious tapes. I had absolutely no idea where anything was going to next and I loved that.