David Lynch's movies are not easy to review, in fact I think words can not describe Surrealist "movies" generally speaking. Yeah I put that by purpose in brackets because they are not like ordinary movies where you expect a clear storyline, character development, an appropriate soundtrack and so on, but here you really have to feel them and be in the correct mood, have enough concentration and be open minded and patient.
You can ask ten people what _Eraserhead_ is about and you'll get ten different answers, so there is no really 'get it' or right or wrong rather a lot room for interpretation and conjecture.

Anyway _Eraserhead_ is David Lynch's first feature-length film after a row of short movies which are exactly what you think they are, really Lynch-like. We find ourselfs trapped in a black and white, dystopian world at an unkown time and follow the Story of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) who impregnates his girlfriend and she gives birth to a malformed baby. overchallenged and desperate by that situation she leaves Henry with the baby alone.

That's basically the main storyline and everything that is obvious and clear, adding more to that would be kind of a spoiler and is open to everyone's imagination anyhow.

This black-and-white, overcast film is irrepressibly unsettling and immerses the viewer in a visual experience that is almost like peering into the mind of a madman. David Lynch's crazy visual universe began here and reached its climax with "Mulholland Drive". It is a film that transcends the categories of mere avant-garde and surrealist cinema, and is a film of overwhelming experimentation, dinners that abnormal psychologists and psychopathologists are in hot pursuit of, and eerie images that look like a psychological test created by a psychiatrist as a desperate measure for the sake of untreatable mental patients. Even ten years after my first viewing, the eerie images stick in my mind like mold. It is David Lynch's masterpiece and perhaps one of the most important films made since the 1970s.

“Eraserhead” is one of those symbolic movies, more like a collection of unsettling moving paintings. It’s Lynch's only feature film to be old-school surrealist, though the way reality is distorted could be considered as expressionist.

There are sequences that could be interpreted in multiple ways, but the main plot is pretty straightforward. Not that the plot is the main focus here: most situations seem to be visually unsettling just for their own sake. The dark and eerie atmosphere that permeates the whole film is disturbing but at the same so fascinating that it gets addictive over time. You don't exactly know why, but you want to go back and rewatch it every now and then just to feel those weird sensations again, like a haunted house. Every shot has been meticulously constructed with the aim of deeply resonate with your subconscious and awaken feelings or sensations that are hard to express logically.

Sound plays a crucial role as well: there is no music at all, extremely limited and uncanny dialogues, but a lot of humming and wheezing mechanical noise which melds perfectly with the cold, hostile wastelands and bare, wretched houses and apartments.

That baby is probably one of the most disturbing I have seen in a movie. I still wonder how they managed to make something like that on their own.

Listen to the full review above!


"For anybody of a given age or someone who is a real cinephile... You only need to hear... David Lynch. The first impression I had was tension, then I watched it again... it's nightmarish." David M. Brown.

"It's one of those things that can only be described as a lucid dream come to life. It takes a certain caliber of person to actually put out work like that. And it's not crazy.... It's Genius." Sarah Peterson.

"Definitely a brain Burner. It was definitely the weirdest movie I've watched. I can't describe this movie in words... It's not of this earth. I want to go sit in a corner in a dark place and think. This is not a movie.... It's beyond a movie." David Veerkamp