Mulholland Drive (2001) review

Even past the 1 hr mark, the plot still doesn’t thicken. It feels like a low-budget 90s mystery TV special, stretched and intentionally opaque. The sound design is consistently atmospheric, constantly hinting that something is wrong, but never quite revealing why. It creates unease without payoff, at least on a surface level. Then suddenly, the film shifts gears and becomes erotic. The intimacy is intense, almost jarring in contrast to the earlier mystery. It’s sensual, and raw. At this point, it starts to feel like the movie can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it suspense, thriller, erotic drama, psychological breakdown? It keeps sliding between genres, refusing to commit, or maybe deliberately blurring them. With less than 30 minutes left, I still didn’t know what the F I was watching. And that confusion feels intentional. The best way I can frame it is through Memento like logic, or an unreliable narrator who can’t fully grasp reality, or worse, someone actively rewriting it to protect themselves. Memories feel distorted, and fragmented. Mulholland Drive doesn’t reward traditional engagement. It withholds clarity, replaces structure with mood, and asks you to sit inside disorientation. Whether that’s brilliant or frustrating depends entirely on your tolerance for ambiguity. For me, it felt less like solving a puzzle and more like being trapped inside someone else’s fractured state of mind, watching their fantasy slowly collapse.