HORROR MONTH #31: Mulholland Drive, by David Lynch (2001)

Type of Media: Film

The phrase 'fear comes from the unknown' has been around for a while, at least long enough for horror movie directors to take note. It makes you wonder, then, why most horror movie plots are straightforward, predictable, paint-by-numbers slogs through story beats we've seen over and over again. How much can you really scare an audience who knows exactly what's going to happen?

Mulholland Drive by David Lynch solves that problem by discarding traditional narrative order and sense. Blurring the line between dream and reality, past and present, Mulholland Drive presents a story that is, to put it lightly, hard to pin down. At its center it's about a woman, gee-shucks ingenue Betty, who moves to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and finds herself involved with a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia, who she names Rita. Surrounding that are threads about a bumbling hitman, a Hollywood director being threatened by a cowboy, a shadowy power broker with a tiny head, and a horrible man who might be controlling everything while hiding behind a diner. None of these stories have clean resolutions. Even the main arc doesn't get much in the way of closure.

What Mulholland Drive nails is a sinking feeling of menace and dread that is beyond conscious comprehension, like you're inhabiting someone else's nightmare. It's a feeling so common in David Lynch projects that it's been dubbed Lynchian horror. While the tone of the movie oscillates violently, spanning everything from romance to slapstick comedy, you always feel as if some important and awful information is just out of your grasp. Its ability to build dread is so incredible that it manages to pull off what is arguably the greatest scare ever put on film, in a scene that is shot in broad daylight, heavily telegraphed, and features no visual effects.

While the film is heavily open to interpretation (Lynch offers no explanation of his own), it does undoubtedly show certain themes. It portrays Hollywood as run by people with inscrutable agendas, but also celebrates the work and art that it produces. It displays the power illusions have over us, how we can be sucked into them even while being reminded that they aren't real. It's a love story that develops into a tragedy of decay and loss. Mulholland Drive has enough consistency to show that it isn't just random sequences and gobbledygook.

If you like stories that are unsettling and disorienting, watch Mulholland Drive. If you enjoy movies that you have to think about, or even watch multiple times to understand, watch Mulholland Drive. If you like Darren Aronofsky movies, True Detective, Tim and Eric, or any of the other countless movies and TV shows that Mulholland Drive has influenced, watch Mulholland Drive. There is a reason a fair amount of critics consider it one of the best movies made in this century so far.