It was greeted at the Cannes Film Festival with booing from the audience and flopped in the United States, but is now seen by some as David Lynch at his best. It is a prequel to Lynch's television series Twin Peaks (1990-91) detailing the last week in the life of Laura Palmer. To an audience not fully aware of the entire TV series, the film is stylish but incomprehensible. The tone of this film is also different to the TV series, which mixed genres fluently. The film is a much darker vision of the same town without the occasions of humor that made Twin Peaks so endearing to many viewers.
Lynch filmed a vast amount of footage, much of it never made the final cut (which still ran for over two hours). The missing footage remains the 'Holy Grail' for many Twin Peaks fans.
The movie title is sometimes given as Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.