I saw the pilot for David Lynch's cult classic TV show, "Twin Peaks," a couple of months ago, and the greatest thing about it was the first hour. In it, the entire town discovered that a young high school girl, Laura Palmer, was found murdered. As the hour unfolded, we saw her parents discover (both at the same time, and over the phone), her schoolmates, and we saw the effect it had on the town. It was like the place had to be closed because of it.

The second hour, though, dipped into weirdo surrealism, like it was afraid to deal further with what occured in the first hour. Bobby, Laura's boyfriend, became especially crazy, attacking one guy, landing in jail, and in one of the funniest scenes in anything I've ever seen, threatened a fellow cell mate by woofing at him. Sure, it's funny, but it's nothing else. I've seen other episodes in the series, and none really owed up to the promise the first hour of the pilot had. Most of them just like to shock you with weird scenes, like one where Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), the caffeine-addicted guy on the case, has a dream where he's in a red room with Laura and a dwarf (Michael J. Anderson), who talks backwards-yet-forwards, and says a bunch of things which make no sense whatsoever, but are just humorous to listen to. But do these things hold any higher purpose?

Well, here's the ill-fated pre-quel to the series, which ended midway through its second season, and the film tries to make some sense out of the series, and to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer which we were all wondering throughout the series (note: I'm not sure whether or not they revealed who it was on the series). The reason it's dead-on-arrival is that the identity of the killer can be anyone in the town. It's almost like David Lynch put all the characters names in a hat, picked one, and said, "okay, there's our killer." It could've been the freaking Log Lady, and they could make it work somehow in this film.

The first half hour of the film is almost like a typical episode of the series: a bunch of really weird scenes tossed together, filled with empty symbolism, but lots of surreal laughs. In it, another Special Agent, Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak - yes, the singer), goes to a town sorta near Twin Peaks with another agent, Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland), to investigate the murder of a woman. They talk to hard-to-get-along-with local authorities, question a disgruntled motel owner (Harry Dean Stanton), and then disappear for no reason whatsoever. This seques to a little bit with Dale Cooper, who wonders where they went, and then has a bit where David Bowie walks into the film, and you can see that the film is taking a wild turn because from this point on, nothing makes sense, least of all the reason why Bowie is in it. Or Cooper, for that matter.

Before you can say "Huh?," the film cuts to a "One Year Later" sub-title, we see the "Twin Peaks" sign, hear the haunting music from the show, and meet Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), alive, well, and smiling from ear to ear as she walks to school. Little do we know, she has another side. Over the course of the rest of the film, she sleeps with a bunch of guys, hits on her best female friend Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle in the show, but eerily replaced by Moria Kelly in the film), does drugs, goes to a topless bar, and all sorts of self-destructive acts.

She also finds discomfort at home. Her father, Leland (Ray Wise), begins acting all strange, or maybe he did it before, we don't know. In the first scene he's in, there's a really humorous scene where Laura and he fight over the fact that she sat at the dinner table without (*gasp*) washing her hands. Her mother (Grace Zubriskie, who played Susan's mother on "Seinfeld" for awhile) tries to cease the fight between them, but can't do anything but scream for them to just stop.

Some critic said that this film showed Laura's gradual descent into madness, and to her eventual murder at the end of the film (I will not reveal the killer's identity, but I will say that the identity is so obvious that it's campy). This is not so. We first see her looking all happy, but we then see her doing all the kinds of stuff she does later on too. It seems like she's rebelling against something, and that she has been doing this for awhile. She starts out this way, and the only gradual thing is how insane she becomes throughout the film.

Laura becomes plagued by nightmares, weird dreams, and visions. She begins seeing things in everyday life, like an old woman (Francis Bay) walking around with a boy wearing a white mask. She dreams of the red room from the TV show, with the dwarf saying empty sentences. And her death becomes imminent not just because the TV show revolved around her death, but because the film unsubtlely hints at it continuously. Her sins in the film become greater by the minute, and it seems that Lynch thinks that she needs some kind of cleansing, that she was murdered because she was so rebellious and ill-mannered.

Interesting subtexts like these abound, but are just part of the overall weirdness that Lynch gives the film. Along with this idea, there's bounds of things that happen that have no relevance over anything that happens, like Bowie's appearance, the red room, or the entire first half hour. What connects the elements of the film? Why are we shown characters, like Madchen Amick's waitress, who show up for a scene or two, are given a bit of drama, and then are never shown again? What is the meaning of the ring, which seems to be the only thing that connects the beginning and rest of the film? And why is Laura haunted by a demon named Bob?

Some fans of Lynch say that he's a genius at work, and that everything means something. A friend of mine actually thinks that the TV show is "brilliant," but when I asked him why he thought he was brilliant, all he did was stutter. I've come to the conclusion that David Lynch is a genius at creating atmosphere and mood, and maybe even pretty competent at bringing up interesting and complex issues about humanity and what not, but that he has no clue what to do with them. He knows that talking about issues like the underbelly of society requires a delicate touch; he's just afraid to take a wrong step.

This seems to be why he resorts to meaningless surrealistic banter, which is exactly what everything in this film is. Lynch is afraid of digging deep within the story and issues, and instead just tosses empty symbolism at us, maybe hoping that the whole pretentiousness of it all will make us watch again and again to get a message, and also that the humor will win us over. For some of us, it does. I laughed at this film. I laughed at all the weird things that went on, and that seems to be what Lynch wants. Why do you have a dwarf speaking backwards-yet-forwards if you don't want someone to get a laugh out of it?

What Lynch could do is express something, anything out of this. I love surrealism, but only when it works the way it should. Luis Bunuel was able to dig deeper into his films by using surrealism, but Lynch uses it as a cover so he doesn't have to really expose his film for what it is. What is "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" even about? Is it about how self-destructive behavior will eventually result in death? Is it about how underneath a seemingly happy society there's a sick underbelly of perverts and drug addicts? What is Lynch trying to convery here?

To put it bluntly, this film is a mess. It doesn't know what it wants to do with anything, and it tries to pass off everything in a surrealistic fashion so that no one can see that underneath, it's just confused about what it wants to be doing. Surrealism needs focus to exist, or else it just meanders off and becomes empty, which is what happens with many of Lynch's films. Especially now, Lynch needs to look back at two of his films: "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet." "Eraserhead" was a really surreal film, but what it did by creating surrealism is show a character who is completely alienated in society. It was basically a stylish nightmare, but it was great in how it was able to present its protagonist and the misery he feels. "Blue Velvet" was probably his most focused film: a film about how underneath society is something which is hideous, but which is ignored for the safety of society. There, he was able to use the surrealism to his advantage, and create not only an experience, but something with meaning and even humanity.

"Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" is an experience, in that several scenes show mood, but none of them have the emotional or intellectual context to take them further and make them meaningful. There's a really long scene where Laura and Donna go to a topless bar, and a band plays so loud that subtitles have to appear on the bottom of the screen so we know what everyone's saying. The mood is great and the scene is atmospheric as hell, but when it's over, nothing remains but the though that the scene felt really weird to watch. Nothing else holds over from it.

The one good thing the film does is create a little bit of sympathy for Laura, mostly because she's the protagonist and we know that at the end, she's going to die and there's no way out of it. It gives it a Sophoclean subtext, but this is only used as a cheap gimmick so that we feel bad for her. Sure, she's self-destructive, but she's going to be murdered gruesomely, and there's nothing anyone in this film can do about it.

But why was she killed? And what is this film, or the TV show about? I guess what it's saying is that underneath, everyone's weird. Yeah.