A prequel to Twin Peaks’ original run on television, Fire Walk with Me somewhat counters the terrifying darkness with which those initial two seasons concluded—this, even though the movie chronicles the tortured last week in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), whose brutal murder is the investigative impetus for the show. Fire Walk with Me involves a level of sexual violence network TV wouldn’t allow, yet it’s somehow the more hopeful experience, even to the point of allowing for an angelic release by its end. Kyle MacLachlan returns as Agent Dale Cooper, along with others from the series, but this is Sheryl Lee’s showcase. After only intermittently appearing on the show, mostly as Laura Palmer’s cousin, here she gets the chance to fully invest in this deeply complicated character, at once intimately familiar as an all-American girl and shudderingly delineated as a young woman both damaged and drawn to darkness. Lee’s true gift is to make every moment—no matter how many Lynch oddities are thrown her way—feel plausible and palpable. By the end, Lee delivers a Laura Palmer who embodies what Fire Walk with Me (indeed, what Twin Peaks as a whole) has been meditating on: that evil lies within each and every one of us and—on a metaphysical plane we can never fully comprehend—predatorially without.
(9/24/2026)
