Inland Empire (film) it "A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma" and Jim Emerson (editor of RogerEbert.com) gave it 4 stars and praised it: "When people say "Inland Empire" is Lynch's "Sunset Boulevard", Lynch's "Persona" or Lynch's "8½", they're quite right, but it also explicitly invokes connections to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le Fou", Buñuel and Dalí's "Un Chien Andalou", Maya Deren's LA-experimental "Meshes of the Afternoon" (a Lynch favorite) and others". However, Carina Chocano of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that "the film, which begins promisingly, disappears down so many rabbit holes (one of them
The Spiral Staircase (1946 film) romance," the film has been noted by contemporary critics for its prominent Gothic horror elements. It has also been cited as one of numerous progenitors to the slasher film, specifically due to its female-centric cast and point-of-view cinematography deployed during scenes in which the killer stalks his victims. Film scholar Amy Golden notes several significant visual allusions in the film, such as Luis Buñuel's "Un chien andalou" (1929) and Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943). Golden cites the film as a "quintessential example of 1940s horror." Writer Denis Grunes in 2007 suggested the film is "in fact a masked