10 Great David Lynch Movies Ranked by How Weird They Are

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8 ‘Blue Velvet’ (1986)

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper

There are plenty of unsettling scenes in Blue Velvet, largely thanks to Dennis Hopper‘s terrifying performance as the vile Frank Booth, one of cinema’s best and most memorable villains. But for those who can get past the disturbing elements, Blue Velvet is ultimately a fairly direct (by Lynch’s standards) crime/thriller with a plot that isn’t nearly as intricate or hard to follow as Lynch’s more bizarre movies.

It’s a neo-noir film that flirts with Lynch’s trademark surrealism in a few spots. However, ultimately, it tells a comprehensible plot involving a young man getting wrapped with a nightclub singer and various unsavory characters who kidnapped her child. Blue Velvet is more disturbing than strange, and viewers who are up to handling some violent and alarming content will likely be able to follow the movie without much confusion.

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7 ‘Dune’ (1984)

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Patrick Stewart

Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune is the better film overall and might be among the all-time great sci-fi movies. However, nearly 40 years before the 2021 film wowed audiences with a faithful adaptation of the classic novel, David Lynch had a go at it. Unlike Villeneuve’s version, Lynch tried condensing the whole thing into one 137-minute-long movie. The results were certainly interesting, with Lynch’s style doing justice to some aspects of the sci-fi epic’s story and world but feeling a little rushed and messy in other areas.

Ultimately, 1984’s Dune will be reasonably comprehensible to those familiar with the novel or the 2021 film, but newcomers to its world might be lost. As a large-scale blockbuster, it’s probably one of the more bizarre of the 1980s; still, Lynch’s Dune tells a cohesive story with more or less recognizable sci-fi tropes, ensuring it’s not among the director’s strangest efforts. Watch on Max

6 ‘Lost Highway’ (1997)

Cast: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Balthazar Getty

Lost Highway represents the point at which things start becoming very strange and heavily Lynchian. This mystery/thriller has a constantly unnerving and nightmarish atmosphere and a labyrinthine plot that involves murder, blackmail, doppelgängers, and a figure known as the Mystery Man who seems to know an unsettling amount about the film’s protagonist.

With a film like Lost Highway, it’s best just to go with the flow and not worry too much about what everything means. It might not strictly count as a film that belongs in the horror genre, but there’s still a good chance it can still cause nightmares. Given it moves at a pretty fast pace, features creative visuals, and is always engaging on some level, it remains fairly accessible, all things considered. Still, this is the point where Lynch’s movies start to become harder to summarize when it comes to their core narratives.

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5 ‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001)

Starring Naomi Watts and Laura Harring

For a good chunk of Mulholland Drive, things are relatively comprehensible; thus, it’s one of David Lynch’s most popular films and highly-regarded efforts. For much of its runtime, it mostly sticks to following two main characters – an aspiring actress and a mysterious amnesiac – who form a close bond, with the former helping the latter find out who she really is. What starts simple soon becomes far more complex and unusual than one might initially expect.

There are a few odd tangents here and there, but these scenes are also often entertaining in their own way. Mulholland Drive‘s ending is where things become very strange, with the surreal atmosphere and dream logic being upped considerably. There’s a definite method to the madness, and it’s certainly not being random just for the sake of it. Alas, most viewers will likely find themselves very lost if they only watch Mulholland Drive once.

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4 ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ (1992)

Cast: Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Kyle MacLachlan

A feature film sequel/prequel to the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me is one of David Lynch’s boldest, best, and most uncompromising movies. It fluctuates between hard-hitting family drama and scenes that feel truly nightmarish, with a plot that mostly focuses on the life of Laura Palmer during her final days. It complements the iconic TV drama series perfectly, though it is considerably more harrowing.

The straightforward scenes that don’t indulge in dreamlike or nightmarish imagery are all very upsetting; when contrasted with the film’s horror elements, they can make Fire Walk With Me a difficult watch. For good measure, there are also plenty of scenes that are hard to analyze or explain – including a wild David Bowie cameo, with most of them featured in the film’s opening half-hour or so.

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3 ‘Wild at Heart’ (1990)

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd

David Lynch plus Nicolas Cage was always going to make for a wild time, and Wild at Heart doesn’t disappoint. The two pair up for one of Lynch’s weirdest movies, with its plot centering on two young lovers on the run. Thus, Wild at Heart is a suitably hectic mash-up of crime, romance, dark comedy, and a road movie.

For anyone who feared just Cage wouldn’t be enough, the film also contains other scenery-chewing actors in its cast, like Willem Dafoe and Crispin Glover. Wild at Heart is violent, hyperactive, and sometimes even an assault on the senses. Additionally, it also contains plenty of references to The Wizard of Oz and Elvis Presley. That being said, it’s not like anyone could call it a genuine musical or anything, but it’s definitely… something. It’s a rocking, bizarre, unsettling “good” time.

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2 ‘Eraserhead’ (1977)

Cast: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Jeanne Bates

Right from the start of Eraserhead, David Lynch wants the viewer to know they’re in for something strange. It serves as a definitive introduction to David Lynch’s filmography as a whole, given it was his first feature film and builds on the weirdness he showcased in his short films made during the 1960s and 1970s. It’s certainly not the only scary movie released in 1977, but it’s definitely up there with the best.

The premise of Eraserhead sounds simple enough: a young man is constantly on edge and struggles to deal with his very strange-looking newborn baby. However, the setting, atmosphere, and overall tone of Eraserhead work together to make it strange; sometimes, it feels like a lot’s going on, and sometimes it feels like surprisingly little is. Eraserheadis as surreal as horror can get, with its experimental elements easily making it one of Lynch’s weirdest.

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1 ‘Inland Empire’ (2006)

Starring Laura Dern and Jeremy Irons

Inland Empire is a terrifying fever dream of a movie that cannot truly be explained. Initially, it seemingly focuses on an actress losing her grip on reality, thereby having some similarities to Mulholland Drive. However, it goes off the rails into an even more bizarre territory far quicker. It’s possible to label Inland Empire as a particularly twisted, bleak, unsettling, and rather long fantasy movie, making it a dense and exhausting watch.

At approximately three hours long, Inland Empire also proves daunting because of its length. It’s currently the last feature in Lynch’s filmography and arguably works as his definitive film, one he’d been building up to his whole career. It might not be his best movie, but Inland Empire is his most ambitious, strangest, and most challenging.

Inland Empire

Release Date

September 6, 2006

Director

David Lynch

Cast

Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Karolina Gruszka, Jan Hencz, Krzysztof Majchrzak

Rating

R

Runtime

180

Main Genre

Drama

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