10 Best Neo-Noir Movies Of The 21st Century

Mulholland Drive, like most David Lynch movies, is a pretty messed up flick. Its surreal aura and bizarre eroticism make for a beautiful, nightmarish, beguiling, sometimes queasy film that stretches the boundaries of the genre like none before it.

Two stories, one based in reality and one in a dream state, merge in and out of each other at a rapid pace. After a car accident, an aspiring actress suffers amnesia, which becomes the inciting incident for a whirlwind of alternate realities and half-truths that simultaneously mocks Hollywood norms.

Lynch makes sure to hit enough of the genre's touchstones that audiences can at least process this as something more than a fragmented meta-fantasy designed to fellate film critics.

For starters, it's set in Los Angeles, which at least contextualizes all of the mystery and illusions as being tied to the real world, and to a city that roughly half of all neo-noirs inhabit. But more importantly, Lynch casts Naomi Watts as the supposedly pure heroine who acts as a stand-in for every "normal" viewer. And that's what makes it so thrilling to watch her fall victim to her dark inner desires.