Inland Empire

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
A woman in trouble...

"You're listening to AXXoN N., the longest radio play in history, continuing in the Baltic Region, a gray winter day in an old hotel..."

In Poland, a prostitute and her customer (their faces blurred) talk in a hotel room. In the same room years later, a woman cries and watches a sitcom starring three rabbits. An actress, Nikki Grace, in Los Angeles gets a visit from her neighbor and the next day gets the part in a movie, On High In Blue Tomorrows, which turns out to be a remake of a Polish film based on a Polish folk tale 47 where the leads were murdered. Nine prostitutes lounge around a house. There's a murder, a mystery, and a woman in trouble.

Possibly David Lynch's most incomprehensible and terrifying film since Eraserhead, its production is unusual: Lynch shot the film in bits and pieces, without a complete screenplay. He would simply hand the actors new pages each day. When asked what it was about, Lynch (who never explains his films) simply quoted from the Aitareya Upanishad: "We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

Tropes used in Inland Empire include:

Nikki: Are you enjoying yourself, Freddie?
Freddie Howard: Well... There is a vast network, right? An ocean of possibilities. I like dogs. I used to raise rabbits. I've always loved animals. Their nature. How they think. I have seen dogs reason their way out of problems. Watched them think through the trickiest situations. Do you have a couple of bucks I could borrow? I've got this damn landlord.

  • Creator Cameo: The lighting technician Kingsly was yelling at is the voice of David Lynch.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Many interpretations of the film indicate that the creepy rabbit people and the strange women that appears at the beginning of the film are actually trying to help the Lost Girl...But being a film of David Lynch you never know.
  • Dream Sequence: it's possible the entire thing is inside Nikki's head
  • Drone of Dread: A majority of the movies score, with the exception of some weird choices.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: The ballerina dancer seen at the end shows up again in Lynch's short film Absurda, and the lone shot from that movie looks remarkably similar to one used near the end of this one.
  • Film Noir: parts of the film mimic the genre, especially scenes of a private investigator.
  • Gainax Ending: The Other Wiki's description of the ending: "The concluding scene of the film takes place in Nikki's house, where she sits with many other people, among them Laura Elena Harring, Nastassja Kinski and Ben Harper. A one-legged woman who was mentioned in Sue's monologue looks around and says, 'Sweet!' Niko, the Japanese girl with a blonde wig and a monkey, is also present. The end credits roll over a group of women dancing and lip-synching to Nina Simone's Sinnerman while a lumberjack saws a log to the beat." So...yeah.
    • This trope is debatable though, considering that the rest of the movie is no less strange.
  • Hair-Raising Hare: the Show Within a Show Rabbits.
  • Le Film Artistique.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters:A very strange example, considering that it'ss practically impossible to tell which of those characters are real and which are not, and several actors play visually identical, yet separate characters.
  • Magic Realism
  • Mind Screw: And HOW! It's up there with Eraserhead. above and beyond Eraserhead
  • Nightmare Face: Here is is, ripe with Uncanny Valley. The rest of the film does this to several characters with lighting tricks.
  • No Plot, No Problem: This movie was produced without a script. Very frequently Lynch would just show up on the set and gave people their lines, clearly having written them no more than a few hours before. When people would ask him what the film was supposed to be about he would respond with a cryptic poem. The general consensus is that there is no plot
    • Though there isn't a (coherent script, whether there isn't a plot is questionable and not as relevant as one would expect. It's inarguable that there's several recurring motifs and characters, though.See Writing by the Seat of Your Pants
  • Nothing Is Scarier: This film will give you nightmares just from buildup alone. You see it's runtime? About two-thirds of that is soul-crushing buildup and atmosphere.

Nikki: Damn! This sounds like dialogue from our script!

  • Precision F-Strike: BRUTAL FAUGHKING MURDER
  • Proscenium Reveal: The cry of "That's a wrap!" and the applause after Laura Dern's "death scene".
  • Self-Parody: Many have suggested that this film has elements of Self-Parody to it. Given that the film is completely messed up it would be hard to seperate parodying elements from others, but some moments do seem ridiculously Lynchian, such as the Locomotion scene. This of course doesn't diminish the film being terrifying beyond all reason.
    • The Barbecue scene....just....what
    • The Phantom standing around with a lightblub in his mouth. Nikki walks up to him, gets scared, grabs a screwdriver, and runs away.
  • Shout-Out: to Sunset Boulevard, one of Lynch's favorite films
  • Show Within a Show: the three rabbits sitcom Susan's story is zig zagged like a motherfucker.
  • Shrug of God: David Lynch doesn't like to talk about his movies, and when asked about Inland Empire, he replied that "it's about a woman in trouble and it's a mystery and that's all I want to say about it."
  • Spiritual Successor: to Mulholland Drive
  • Sudden Musical Ending: Of all the films to have one.
  • Surreal Horror: Emphasis on the surreal. And the horror.
  • Surreal Humor: See Self-Parody
  • Wham! Line:

Neighbor: Is there a...murder...in your film?
Nikki: Um, no, that's not part of the story.
Neighbor: I think you are wrong about that.
Nikki: Sorry?
Neighbor: BRUTAL FUCKING MURDER.

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