The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

34. 1992 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Fire Walk With Me
New Line Cinema

Honourable Mentions: Hard Boiled, Malcolm X, Unforgiven

1992 is an exemplary movie year from an exemplary movie era, boasting a magnum opus from Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, the pinnacle of Hong Kong action with John Woo's Hard Boiled, and an intoxicating dose of gothic horror from Francis Ford Coppola with his adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. While those films were immediately canonised as modern classics, enjoying cult and awards success in equal measure, there was one masterpiece from the same year that wasn't so fortunate - one that came from one of our most celebrated but now sadly departed auteurs.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a crucible of a film - a prequel to a televised phenomenon where levity is light and pure, unvarnished horror engulfs completely and utterly. It was made in the aftermath of a creative ruction. Twin Peaks co-creators David Lynch and Mark Frost had seen their series plans upended thanks to the interference of ABC executive Bob Iger, which in turn led Lynch - whose vision also differed from that of Frost's - to end the show on an incredible yet gutting cliffhanger with its cancellation.

Fire Walk with Me entered into production soon after, with Lynch determined to explore the tragic character of Laura Palmer, who viewers had only come to know through the judgment and interpretation of Twin Peaks' residents and the intrepidly empathetic FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan). With his film, Lynch sought a cathartic and thematic post-script to the series' explorations of love and evil, and the end result - lacking in much of Coop or the quirkier components that endeared Twin Peaks in its initial airing run - was inevitably divisive.

Lynch's prequel is less a replication of the tonality of the show and more a long, pained scream - a fierce recontextualisation of the complex young woman who lived in death. Sheryl Lee's performance as Laura is a tempest of emotional torture and anguished release, with Lynch stoking the flames to newfound heights of terror and vulnerability before the credits roll.

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.