A close-up of Laura Dern in Inland EmpireImage via StudioCanal
By
Thomas Butt
Published Feb 1, 2026, 9:02 PM EST
Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself.
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By some strange coincidence, Terry Crews is technically in the David Lynch canon. A fact as baffling as the late director's filmography, the actor and television host known for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Everybody Hates Chris, and America's Got Talent made a surprise appearance in Lynch's final film, Inland Empire. It's easy not to notice him on the screen, as your mind is too warped and puzzled to focus on anything besides trying to untangle this enigmatic nightmare that represented Lynch's quirks and sensibilities to the maximum degree. With Lynch no longer with us, Inland Empire, starring one of his go-to stars, Laura Dern, has taken on an increasingly poignant strain. Even if you were completely bewildered by it, the film still deserves your utmost attention.
Terry Crews Makes a Surprise Cameo in 'Inland Empire'
Laura Dern wearing a robe sits in a chair with a group of other women posing behind herImage via 518 Media
Released in 2006, Inland Empire was Lynch's last narrative feature film, an ironic label considering the complete disregard for any narrative conventions in the movie. Channeling the pursuit of acting stardom from Mulholland Drive, the film begins from the perspective of Nikki Grace (Dern), a determined actress who adopts the persona of her character in a South-set melodrama. Of course, like any Lynch experience, Inland Empire devolves into a surreal nightmare where up is down and left is right. Nikki transforms into her character, Susan Blue, and emerges from the labyrinthine pathways of Nikki's consciousness to even deeper levels of Susan's. Throw in a few other parallel universes and a sitcom featuring rabbits, and you have got yourself one fever dream.
Of all the inexplicable actions and confounding narrative directions taken, the most peculiar aspect of Inland Empire, when watching in 2026, has to be the presence of Terry Crews, who plays an unhoused man credited as "Street Person #3." Crews, a former football player-turned-supporting comedy actor who will pop up in an Adam Sandler movie, is rarely found in any prestige projects. He wasn't a complete unknown at the time, having memorably played President Camacho in Idiocracy as well as other bit parts in White Chicks and The Longest Yard, so his appearance is even more baffling.
However, there is no such thing as a small part in a Lynch film, even for Crews, who has almost zero lines of dialogue. Most of his screen time is in the background, looking over his shoulder as two other fellow street dwellers chat about all the places they can go in Hollywood. The scene takes place on the city's renowned Walk of Fame, with a distraught Nikki dropped in the middle of this conversation. Crews expresses so much through a subtle glance, with his tired and weathered stare providing the scene with a grounded edge amid this bizarre dreamscape. Of all the cryptic portals and alternate universes that Nikki enters, this scene on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is perhaps the most defined. Here, impoverished, downtrodden individuals can only dream about taking a bus to Pomona as they lie on property endowed by prodigious celebrity icons. In her fantasy world of showbiz, Nikki's subconscious is ignoring the less fortunate population of Los Angeles.
'Inland Empire' is the Culmination of David Lynch's Fascinations
By 2006, you were either completely in the bag for David Lynch or tapped out from his inscrutable world. He carried the momentum of Inland Empire to his final masterwork on television, Twin Peaks: The Return, in 2017. Inland Empire, a glorified experimental film, makes Mulholland Drive look like a mumblecore dramedy. For better or worse, it is one of the most narratively and thematically inexplicable films ever put on screen. Describing any element of the film paints it as a parody of a Lynchian experience, but viewers are sure to get lost in the endless whirlpool of Nikki's odyssey of self-discovery and reflection of past trauma and her own reconciliation with acting. The most striking aspect of the film is its MiniDV camcorder photography, which compromises Lynch's usual visual elegance but enhances the level of intimacy. The low-grade aesthetic not only adds griminess to an unsettling world, but it also tricks the viewer into thinking they're watching stolen private footage inside someone's soul.
Inland Empire is a fitting swan song for arguably the most uncompromising visionary of his generation, a director who refused to comply with demands and pursue his idiosyncratic but relatable interpretation of the world. Without needing to target explicit themes or messages, David Lynch tapped into the psyche of the disillusioned viewers who were both afraid and curious about the great unknown. Inland Empire was the culmination of his fascination with dreams, mortality, and the spirit of the individual against unstoppable forces, even if it doesn't seem like it's about anything.
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Subscribe to the newsletter for more coverage of Lynch, surprise cameos, director canons, and other cinematic curiosities that deepen how you see films and spark fresh rewatching. Subscribe By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.Inland Empire is available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.
Inland Empire
Like R Drama Documentary Horror Mystery Thriller Release Date September 6, 2006 Runtime 180 minutes Director David Lynch Writers David LynchCast
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Laura Dern
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Jeremy Irons
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Terry Crews
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