David Lynch's purest nightmare since Eraserhead is an indescribably strange and brilliant odyssey that finds star Laura Dern incarnating a number of different women who are either all aspects of the same actress' personality or simply united by their suffering. Lynch worked long and hard on this “experimental project,” as he refers to it in an interview here, and it shows. He also clearly wants viewers to see the film under ideal circumstances, so he included a unique calibration test on the first disc of this two-disc set, in order to help viewers align the brightness, contrast and color scheme on their TV monitor. Lynch has shrunk away from including extras in past releases of his major-studio films on DVD, but here he serves as a sort of ersatz host whose presence dwarfs everyone else, to the extent that one hears nothing from the cast, including Dern, who delivers a powerhouse lead performance. A new short (Ballerina) and two behind-the-scenes featurettes are included, with the entry “Stories” a particular standout. In it, Lynch sits smoking and rambling about the film's production, becoming especially angry when contemplating the idea of someone watching Inland on a handheld device: “It's such a sadness that you think you've seen the film on your f**king telephone … get real!”

Shelf Talk: Inland will confuse and alienate those who are not familiar with Lynch's filmmaking, but the devoted will be queuing up to buy this package, primarily because the film is rife for multiple viewings and discussion. More importantly, Lynch includes a whopping 74 minutes of unseen footage, labeled “More Things That Happened.” The scenes may not be as compelling as what wound up in the film, but they do shore up two of Dern's fragmented personas.