Under the Silver Lake and 4 Other Most Lynchian Movies Made NOT by David Lynch
These projects are imbued with the signature style of the great director.
David Lynch's influence on cinema is so great that his style can even be seen in the works of other directors. Mystical environments, terrible secrets, eccentric characters, demons from other dimensions – these ingredients create the very Lynchian atmosphere.
1. Eyes Wide Shut, 1999
Stanley Kubrick's final film remains his most controversial and incomprehensible project. Eyes Wide Shut is best described as an erotic thriller about our deepest, wildest desires and the inexplicable, sinister force that compels us to act on them.
It's one of those abstract, surreal films about melancholy and transgression that treads the same ground as David Lynch's work.
2. Under the Silver Lake, 2018
The main character searches all over Los Angeles for his neighbor, but his adventure doesn't look like a typical detective's job at all.
Along the way, he discovers the most unbelievable and surreal details of the surrounding reality, and as the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe what is happening on screen.
Dead billionaires, women in owl masks, Kurt Cobain's guitar and the man who actually wrote all the songs in the world – everything seems to be connected. Maybe this is how Lynch would have filmed if he had been born 30 years later.
3. A Different Man, 2024
Actor Edward lives in New York and suffers from neurofibromatosis, a disease that causes numerous benign tumors to appear on the skin.
Trying to make a career and continue a relationship with his neighbor Ingrid, Edward decides to undergo an experimental procedure. The treatment brings results – Edward becomes attractive, but immediately loses Ingrid's interest.
Things get complicated when Oswald, an actor with the same diagnosis, is cast in a play based on Edward's life. A race for recognition begins, imbued with a spirit of rivalry and rejection.
A Different Man is a tragicomedy about doppelgangers and the absurdity of our world. The director juxtaposes original and copy, beauty and ugliness, and asks provocative questions in the best Lynch tradition.
4. John Dies at the End, 2012
In 2012, Phantasm director Don Coscarelli adapted David Wong's lovecraftian novel John Dies at the End, about the strange, gruesome, and utterly surreal adventures of a young slacker with telekinetic abilities.
There is no point in trying to summarize the plot – it is impossible to explain even a third of the madness that goes on here: zombie skinheads, travel through multiverses, mutants, and mountains of severed limbs.
The movie comes very close to the boundaries of Lynch's world, showing us familiar types of young burnouts, brutal cops, journalists involved in the intricacies of dark secrets, and, of course, sinister aliens from a parallel dimension.
5. 1408, 2007
Just one night in a cursed hotel room will divide the life of writer Mike into before and after. Each subsequent hour within the walls of room 1408, like a new circle of hell, plunges the cynical researcher of paranormal phenomena deeper and deeper into the abyss of suffering and hopelessness.
1408 has much in common with the chthonic horror of the Black Lodge. Ghosts, demons, mysterious voices, supernatural events – 1408 has it all.
