"Inland Empire" represents the culmination of David Lynch's thirty years as a filmmaker, and I am not surprised this will probably be his last feature film. More than any other of his works, it's an abstract experience that is impossible to translate into words effectively.

Unlike most people have said, there IS a coherent plot, even though it might be hard to put all pieces together during your first view as you need to get familiar with the actors' faces and roles. The story is destructured and fragmented, Lynch didn't even have a script ready while he was shooting and just connected the dots while editing for post-production. As the main characters are actors, it's not clear if what we are watching is happening in the real world or on a set, even the characters themselves end up getting lost inside the multiple realities. The same actors play different roles, but different actors also happen to share the same roles. It kinds of reflects on the ability of cinema to make abstractions concrete, with actors being able to travel in between these "worlds". This clearly happens when Nikki gets to the other side of a set while shooting a scene where she goes buy groceries.

However, understanding the plot and themes is not the point this time, it's all about our inner feelings and perception of what is being shown to us. The way emotions get "released" with the ending is so poetic and powerful that I couldn't hold back my tears, even if I didn't even understand what was going on. I am not a big fan, but Laura Dern did an incredible job here, to the point that I cannot imagine anyone else being cast for Nikki's role. After all, the film was entirely built around her.

The video quality is ugly, with many pixelated and grainy shots, shaky camera, uncomfortable close-ups and weird wide-angles. It takes a while to get used to it, but it somehow contributes to creating this gritty, horrific atmosphere. Lynch also did an incredible job with sound designing here. You will need to keep the volume high and the room dark to get sucked in though, this is not something you should watch on your iPad or while you are ironing.