I'm a huge David Lynch fan ("Mulholland Drive", "Eraserhead"), and while unabashedly love the first season and a half of the groundbreaking TV show Twin Peaks, it took me a long time to get through the latter half of the second season of the aforementioned show because it sort of started to go off the rails when Lynch wasn't steering the ship. Just to give you a sense of timing: it took me about two weeks to get through the first season and a half (first eighteen episodes), and then after I found out who killed Laura Palmer and why, it took me almost a year to finish those final twelve episodes. I did finally finish those less-than-stellar episodes, and I was surprised to find that despite my relative disappointment with most of season two, the series finale was pretty great, and it left me eagerly awaiting this film, and then completing my Twin Peaks journey with Twin Peaks: The Return (I'm only a few episodes in so far, but it's fantastic). I was so excited after the season two finale that I jumped right from that episode to this movie (like I'm sure many of the hardcore fans of the series did when this film hit theaters).
As a whole, I'm sort of conflicted about this movie. I think it's a very good companion piece to Twin Peaks, as it tells the story of Laura Palmer's final days leading up to her murder from Laura's perspective, revealing all of the information we learned about Laura and Twin Peaks in an easily digestible two-hour-and-fifteen minute chunk. In a lot of ways, I like this film: any time that I get to visit Twin Peaks with David Lynch as my guide, I'm happy. At the same time, I'm not really sure if this film needs to exist, as it doesn't reveal any new information, and it essentially spoils the whole story of the first two seasons. The only people who can really appreciate this movie for what it is are those who have seen the show, and those people already know everything that's going to happen in this movie, they just haven't seen it from Laura's perspective.
As a whole, I'm sort of conflicted about this movie. I think it's a very good companion piece to Twin Peaks, as it tells the story of Laura Palmer's final days leading up to her murder from Laura's perspective, revealing all of the information we learned about Laura and Twin Peaks in an easily digestible two-hour-and-fifteen minute chunk. In a lot of ways, I like this film: any time that I get to visit Twin Peaks with David Lynch as my guide, I'm happy. At the same time, I'm not really sure if this film needs to exist, as it doesn't reveal any new information, and it essentially spoils the whole story of the first two seasons. The only people who can really appreciate this movie for what it is are those who have seen the show, and those people already know everything that's going to happen in this movie, they just haven't seen it from Laura's perspective.