It’s hard to do justice to a film like INLAND EMPIRE (it’s supposed to be in all capitals) in a printed review. There is simply no way to capture the sheer evocative power of its uncanny imagery or its full psychological impact in words.

It’s like trying to clench tightly to a fading dream. A more appropriate response than writing a review might be to spray paint on a random door or scream in the street in a non-existent language.

INLAND EMPIRE is not quite as impressive as Blue Velvet or the Twin Peaks TV pilot by the same director, but parts of the film are as magnificent as anything that came out in the last 12 months.

It is easily the most eerily fascinating film of the year. Part of the reason for its offbeat nature may be that the movie had no complete script and Lynch intuitively made up many lines as he went along. It’s in equal parts a psychotherapy session and a film.

INLAND EMPIRE is being distributed by Lynch himself. The film is so obscure and perplexing that no studio could ever hope to find a wide audience for it.

It defies genre classification and contains elements of neo noir, drama, surrealism dark comedy, horror, and even musical numbers.

Though the film was snubbed by the Golden Globes it has earned a tremendous amount of critical acclaim. On a recent Indywire poll of 107 of the top critics, only three films had more votes for best feature, and David Lynch placed second as best director.

INLAND EMPIRE is a three-hour epic that was completely shot on digital video. The film mostly tells a story of an actress who is about to have an affair with her womanizing co-star. Occasionally, the film cuts away from that narrative to shots of human sized rabbits that read sitcom lines in deadpan voices on a stage while an audience laughs hysterically. The rabbits do mundane domestic activities such as read the paper and talk. The choice of rabbits seems to be somewhat ironic because bunnies are associated with promiscuity, and they seem to be functioning as a mock-normal family.

There are also dramatic scenes in Polish as well as shots of a chorus of prostitutes that comment on the story, sing 60s songs, and talk to the main character. Their version of "The Locomotion" was one of the weirdest musical numbers since Dean Stockwell lip-synched the title track in Blue Velvet.

Laura Dern (who also worked with Lynch in Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart) distinguishes herself in one of her best roles as an actress named Nikki who tempts the fates, and helps sow the seeds of her own destruction.

Nikki is working on a film that is supposedly cursed and strange things begin to happen. The last time someone tried to shoot the film in Poland, the main actors were brutally murdered.

There are many other portents of doom. A strange Polish woman tells a folk tale about a boy who inadvertedly unleashes evil on the world, and she also predicts Nikki’s death.

Lynch also tries to subvert our notions of character, and it’s never clear where one character ends and another begins. When Nikki plays her part she actually seems to become the character she is portraying as well as the actress who played the role before. She may be jumping from one alternate reality or time to another.

This story in the film seems to mirror Nikki’s own situation since she also has a murderous husband and she is considering adultery, but it also echoes the situation of the actress who played in the last version, who was murdered.

Unlike many mainstream films disguised as Indy features (Babel comes to mind), INLAND EMPIRE truly tries to break all the cinematic rules imaginable and push the audience as far as it can. The film is always remarkable even when it fails to connect.

Adventurous viewers should see it before it disappears, but only if they feel they are up to the task of a great challenge.