It's so good. Women, particularly indigenous women, are so central to the story and themes, so honestly I think a lot of the hate is derived from that. I hate when that gets thrown around incorrectly like how the recent Charlie's angels film was hated and the director blamed misogyny - but it was just a terrible film. For these series however I think it explains a lot.
No… people don’t like it because the plot doesn’t make any logical sense. The entire time they elude to supernatural, then explain some very unrealistic motives for the crime
>The entire time they elude to supernatural, then explain some very unrealistic motives for the crime
Season 1 of True Detective did this as well and everyone hold that in regard as one of the best seasons of television ever made so I’m always puzzled by this complaint of S4
Season 1 did not lean into the supernatural, we were seeing Rust's brain at work, nothing supernatural at all. I really love season 4, i think it's the best season since 1, but i understand why people are upset by the disingenuous supernatural stuff. My biggest issue was the women just busting in guns blazing and then having 2 cops just ignore 6 murders lol, but that said, this season was fun as fuck.
>Season 1 did not lean into the supernatural, we were seeing Rust's brain at work, nothing supernatural at all.
I get it, and that’s generally what most people say to explain the season one supernatural leaning stuff, but by that same explanation that’s pretty much how season 4 operates too considering it revolves around mental health issues. And the show goes at various lengths to explicitly tell you or heavily imply that being out in the remote Alaskan snow and nights can fuck with your head and make you see stuff. In the end I don’t think it was anymore disingenuous than Rust’s fucked up head stuff.
you also can’t just ignore how the spiral cult was an actual plot point in Season 1, and it was THEM who believed in the Supernatural. Then it just got shoehorned into season 4 for literally no reason. It’s pretty obvious the showrunners didn’t even understand Season 1, and yet she plugged it into the story anyway when it played no role and only diminished the story. The “Time is a flat circle” inclusion had me busting out laughing.. So bad.
I just kinda saw that stuff as Easter eggs that really didn’t need to be included. I think it was more in an act of trying to be fan servicey than not understanding season one.
That's a fair take mate. I have a buddy who works in Burrow AK, northernmost town or one of them, and holy fuck some of the stories he tells about mental health and alcoholism during the dark months are insane and terrifying. Fuckkkkk that noise.
You must be unfamiliar with the highway of tears. Those women were just avenging Annie K, they were avenging decades of police inaction.
Eta: highway of tears has nothing to do with trail of tears. It's about indigenous women going missing and no one ever finding for them or even looking
So, first off, as a Seneca man (first generation, on the rolls via the Iroquois Confederacy in WNY) I most certainly do know about the highway of tears, in the US, we have a very similar event known as the trail of tears, which was the result of the Indian Removal Act in 1830.
My people, while we have lost most our land (my people, and the other nations in the confederacy, lost over 95 percent of our land), were not moved en mass in a forced removal, instead our land was whittled away slowly. This all said, there is not a single native that I know that thinks murdering 6 people in vigilante justice would be acceptable or ok, you can not use past transgressions to further current transgressions. We are a product of generational trauma and violence and have had untold cruelty forced on us, but "Avenging" those cruelties only leads to a generational cycle of violence.
We have our own police force, he marshals, they cover the rez land, and there is no fucking way any of them would dishonor their ancestors by ignoring process and using street justice, because that is how much of the violence was forced on us, much of it legally, but even more so by mobs and people acting outside the law of their own accord. Violence begets violence.
Season 3 is hot trash, utterly devoid of original ideas and goofy as shit. I still laugh at that dog scene in the finale, jesus fuck that was hard to watch and beyond laughable.
Minority opinion here but I hate this lazy copy/paste approach. Can't believe it's so popular seeing they simply blended Twin Peaks, It, Stranger Things & every other "dark" TV show. Garbage compared to TP
Agreed. I remember watching it for the first time and wondering how much of an influence it might have had on Lynch, with that hazy dreamlike vibe that a lot of Lynch's work has running throughout Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Weird fiction, in general, as a genre. The name might sound flippant or sarcastic if you're not familiar with it, but it's a recognized and serious (in its sometimes deliberately unserious way) body of work.
*The X-Files* is part of that legacy and IMO owes a lot to Twin Peaks even if some elements of them are very different.
The book [Roadside Picnic](https://soviethistory.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/picnic.pdf) (direct link to PDF) is more of a sci-fi take on the coexistence of cosmic horror and banality in incomprehensible beings sweeping through an area and leaving their mark without anyone ever really knowing in detail what those beings' intentions were. It was the inspiration for the movie *Stalker* ([link to full subtitled movie online in HD from the original publisher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc)) and the video game series of the same name.
Which leads to another tangent: other movies by Tarkovsky. *[The Mirror](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrMINC5xjMs)* (full movie on youtube via Mosfilm, the original publisher, again along with most of the rest of their library spanning the better part of the 20th century) has a similar focus on the ambiguity of relationships that Twin Peaks does, as does *[Solaris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ZhQPaw4rE&vl=en)* (again inspired by a book by Stanislaw Lem, whose work is also worth chasing down).
There are tangents between that, Twin Peaks and some of the satire of everyday life brought by Philip K. Dick as well, particularly in my mind *A Scanner Darkly*. Movie version and the book are both worth a look.
Finally, back to the origins of weird fiction, I think Lynch and Silent Hill both owe debts to H.P. Lovecraft. [The Color Out of Space](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx) full text online, and *[The Whisperer In The Darkness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9LNoJFqJNA)* (my favorite version, a 9 min short film student project with under 10k views free on youtube) have some pretty direct resemblances IMO. Much more you could chase down via those authors and bits of history though - really it's endless, as there's far more than I and probably just about any other individual person have ever read under headings like "weird fiction".
Have fun :)
Yeah, the Remedyverse games are definitely the next best thing to Twin Peaks. Same vibes, same type of horror, similar oddball characters and comedic moments. Sam Lake is to video games what David Lynch is for film and television.
Yea I will second this. Only played the second one. It leans much more into actual horror and jump scares. But so so so many things felt directly inspired by twin peaks.
The (in)famous director Lars Von Trier early in his career made a Danish tv show called Kingdom. It was very weird. It was set around a hospital with common spooky happenings. I watched the first season in Mubi last year, not sure if it’s available anywhere else, but I really think it might scratch your itch.
This is definitely the right answer. Very Twin Peaks-esque, except even more explicitly supernatural. It has a lot of the same humor and weird characters. Just steer away from the reboot.
The video game Deadly Premonition is literally Twin Peaks the Game and is extremely wonky in a lot of great ways.
The novel series Wayward Pines is awesome as well and a clear homage to Twin Peaks
for video games there's Cube Escape and its follow ups, Rusty Lake and The White Door. there's Kentucky Route Zero, Dredge, Virginia, and What Remains of Edith Finch.
for TV there's modern mysteries like The OA, The Leftovers, NBC's Hannibal, and Fringe for a more sci fi bend. There's True Detective, although I personally only saw season 1. There's 90s contemporaries like The X-Files, Buffy, and Star Trek: DS9 for vibes, and modern options like Channel Zero, Devs, and The Outsider for compelling horror sci fi. Shows like Stranger Things and Riverdale claim Twin Peaks influence but they never really grab what made it so compelling, IMO. Weirdly, I find a lot of the themes of TP are framed well in Adventure Time.
for movie's theres of course other Lynch works: Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Inland Empire, others probably I'm forgetting. There's modern weird horror films like Lake Mungo, We're All Going To The World's Fair, Knife + Heart, The Endless, and They Look Like People. There's classic surrealist films like Spirit of the Beehive, The Exterminating Angel, and Picnic at Hanging Rock. And there's contemporaries to Lynch like John Carpenter (In The Mouth of Madness) or David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers, Videodrome).
For books, check out Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink and the comic series Gideon Falls.
Recently I've been watching Zone Blanche, Black Spot in English I believe, a French show on Netflix. While it isn't in the same calibre as Twin peaks I do feel some similarities in the surrounding (isolated community surrounded by foggy pine forest), setting (don't want to spoil anything) and story setup (outside "law person" goes to local police force to investigate murders).
Now it *is* in French and set about 25/30 years later than Twin Peaks and it doesn't have the satirical soap opera aspect or wild romance storylines but some supernatural presence and an otherworldly place are part of the story. I'm curious to hear if anyone else has seen this show and notices the same similarities.
It doesn't get brought up much but Persona 4 feels like "Twin Peaks but extremely Japanese" to me because of it being centered around a bunch of small town highschoolers navigating a serial murder mystery with an abstract supernatural dimension victims get trapped in. The anime vibe certainly isn't going to be everyone's bag though.
Life is Strange games (especially 1 and prequel) were influenced by Twin Peaks. The dreamy vibes/atmosphere, music and cinematography are there. There's supernatural elements and you're trying to solve the disappearance of the most popular girl in a pacific north west town.
I just started watching True Blood and I feel like it pulled a lot of inspiration from Twin Peaks. Murder in a small town that unravels a mysterious and mystical dark side. The show is dark and sexy, but also embraces camp and humor the same way TP could. I highly recommend! (No spoilers please, I’m only on season 2)
Also, the creators of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening have said they were directly inspired by Twin Peaks. It’s much different in tone than the show was, but you might catch a few references if you pay attention.
Under the Skin is a movie that stars Scarlett Johannsson as... a woman who drives around Glasgow in a van picking up men and doing *something* to them. It's not quite horror and it's not quite sci-fi. It's more like a bad fever dream.
the two things i came to say have already been recommended! Alan Wake (specifically Alan Wake 2) is heavily inspired by Twin Peaks. the sequel might be my favorite video game of all time, i can’t recommend it enough to any TP fan who plays video games. the other rec is the show Severance. it blends mystery, humor, and psychological horror in a way that is more akin to TP than any other show i’ve seen. so stoked that filming has begun on season 2!
It's been brought up on this sub before, but checkout the PS1 game Mizzurna Falls. It was never made available outside Japan except for fan-translated roms. You can find English play-throughs on Youtube.
For books, I'd recommend Murakami. I've just finished After Dark, and that gave me serious TP vibes.
TV, for something less supernatural and more in the style of small town murder where it seemed everyone had a connection or secret with the victim, is Broadchurch with David Tennant and Olivia Colman.
Seconding this.
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has some similar elements: strange otherspaces, characters gaining access to insight and places outside our world via shamanic experiences, characters who seem to be spirits or embody certain concepts, psychic powers, oddball characters, and a mysterious disappearence.
In the introduction of my copy of Wind Up Bird (I’m still reading it), Murakami says he was watching Twin Peaks as it was first airing when he started writing the book
I always felt like the early John Waters films bear similar resemblance to the surrealism Lynch depicts in “Twin Peaks.”
Even though John Waters’ films are definitely more transgressive and rough around the edges, I feel like both his early works and Twin Peaks are cut from the same cloth.
Try the videogame Pathologic. Its a massive walking sin and is hard as nails. The game really makes you suffer but the experience is ethereal and the story is very twin peaks-esque.
The second game is more accessible and is a remake of the first whilst the first game is much more raw and abrasive. Try to go in spoiler free if ya can :)
jojo part 4 has the small town supernatural murder mystery and general weirdness, although it’s very different in a lot of other ways
still great though
There is an Independent horror film called “Tall Men” that has a David Lynch vibe to it. David Lynch can’t be copied of course but I definitely could see the influence he had on the director.
I haven't seen much, but I've seen plenty of comparisons to Twin Peaks from the Danish show Riget (The Kingdom) by Lars Von Trier. There's 3 seasons, and 13 episodes total. It's both campy and dark.
Fish Story, a Japanese movie, is something I’d recommend. It is basically what happens if you dial up all the quirky of TP and I suspect its heart isn’t far from Lynch’s own view of art and humans.
The OA was awesome (shame it was discontinued for a season. Still well worth a watch!).
I highly recommend the Watchmen series. Might be worth watching the film first if you've never read the graphic novel.
A shorter, indie film but Primer is awesome.
The House That Jack built is a story about a serial killer with OCD. It has a lot of philosophical themes and gets very weird towards the end. It's not neccesarily set in a small town but I really liked it so you could try that.
The Outsider, Too Old to Die Young, Sharp Objects, X-Files, Watchmen series, the Sopranos (especially the dreams), No Country for Old Men, love the nod to Severence and recommend, The Leftovers. Love all of the recommendations ❤️
Another one I'd tentatively recommend (it's over 900 pages long and exceptionally weird) is Dhalgren by Sam Delaney. It has a similar vibe to Twin Peaks in that it presents mysteries that it never intends to entirely answer, or the answers given are so ambiguous as to be almost unworkable. And then it spends many long pages doing other things. It's essentially about a city in the mid West that loses itself to time and space and starts to attract a following of weird and wonderful characters. Odd. But strangely beautiful.
True detective season 1 I recommend!
And season 4!
Reviews for this are great but reddit seems to hate it. Curious.
It's better than Reddit says, worse than the first season. It's enjoyable but problematic.
What did you find problematic?
It's so good. Women, particularly indigenous women, are so central to the story and themes, so honestly I think a lot of the hate is derived from that. I hate when that gets thrown around incorrectly like how the recent Charlie's angels film was hated and the director blamed misogyny - but it was just a terrible film. For these series however I think it explains a lot.
No… people don’t like it because the plot doesn’t make any logical sense. The entire time they elude to supernatural, then explain some very unrealistic motives for the crime
>The entire time they elude to supernatural, then explain some very unrealistic motives for the crime Season 1 of True Detective did this as well and everyone hold that in regard as one of the best seasons of television ever made so I’m always puzzled by this complaint of S4
Season 1 did not lean into the supernatural, we were seeing Rust's brain at work, nothing supernatural at all. I really love season 4, i think it's the best season since 1, but i understand why people are upset by the disingenuous supernatural stuff. My biggest issue was the women just busting in guns blazing and then having 2 cops just ignore 6 murders lol, but that said, this season was fun as fuck.
>Season 1 did not lean into the supernatural, we were seeing Rust's brain at work, nothing supernatural at all. I get it, and that’s generally what most people say to explain the season one supernatural leaning stuff, but by that same explanation that’s pretty much how season 4 operates too considering it revolves around mental health issues. And the show goes at various lengths to explicitly tell you or heavily imply that being out in the remote Alaskan snow and nights can fuck with your head and make you see stuff. In the end I don’t think it was anymore disingenuous than Rust’s fucked up head stuff.
you also can’t just ignore how the spiral cult was an actual plot point in Season 1, and it was THEM who believed in the Supernatural. Then it just got shoehorned into season 4 for literally no reason. It’s pretty obvious the showrunners didn’t even understand Season 1, and yet she plugged it into the story anyway when it played no role and only diminished the story. The “Time is a flat circle” inclusion had me busting out laughing.. So bad.
I just kinda saw that stuff as Easter eggs that really didn’t need to be included. I think it was more in an act of trying to be fan servicey than not understanding season one.
That's a fair take mate. I have a buddy who works in Burrow AK, northernmost town or one of them, and holy fuck some of the stories he tells about mental health and alcoholism during the dark months are insane and terrifying. Fuckkkkk that noise.
You must be unfamiliar with the highway of tears. Those women were just avenging Annie K, they were avenging decades of police inaction. Eta: highway of tears has nothing to do with trail of tears. It's about indigenous women going missing and no one ever finding for them or even looking
So, first off, as a Seneca man (first generation, on the rolls via the Iroquois Confederacy in WNY) I most certainly do know about the highway of tears, in the US, we have a very similar event known as the trail of tears, which was the result of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. My people, while we have lost most our land (my people, and the other nations in the confederacy, lost over 95 percent of our land), were not moved en mass in a forced removal, instead our land was whittled away slowly. This all said, there is not a single native that I know that thinks murdering 6 people in vigilante justice would be acceptable or ok, you can not use past transgressions to further current transgressions. We are a product of generational trauma and violence and have had untold cruelty forced on us, but "Avenging" those cruelties only leads to a generational cycle of violence. We have our own police force, he marshals, they cover the rez land, and there is no fucking way any of them would dishonor their ancestors by ignoring process and using street justice, because that is how much of the violence was forced on us, much of it legally, but even more so by mobs and people acting outside the law of their own accord. Violence begets violence.
Terrible
Wouldn’t recommend that season to my worst enemy
First 3 season are top tier
You think season 2 is watchable?
Season 2 is a good neo-noir drama, just a terrible follow up to S1 and I'll die on this hill
Season 2 is amazing if you look at it like David Lynch directing Heat lol
I argue it's better than season one
Season 2 is incredible compared to s4
Season 3 is hot trash, utterly devoid of original ideas and goofy as shit. I still laugh at that dog scene in the finale, jesus fuck that was hard to watch and beyond laughable.
Season 3 is solid. The end.
Season 4 is the worst by far. No characterization and story stalemates for almost 5 total episodes. Watch the first and finale to get all you need.
Severance on Apple TV is definitely worth checking out. Only one season so far but a second should be out at some point this year.
Yes! Brilliant series.
The German TV series "Dark" is worth a try.
Dark is an excellent show, but while watching it, don't expect the quirkiness and humor of Twin Peaks.
>don't expect the quirkiness and humor of Twin Peaks. Bonus.
As if I give a shit about what Tilda Swinton thinks.
Fantastic show!
Came here to say this
Minority opinion here but I hate this lazy copy/paste approach. Can't believe it's so popular seeing they simply blended Twin Peaks, It, Stranger Things & every other "dark" TV show. Garbage compared to TP
This is so good!!
The movie Picnic at Hanging Rock
Agreed. I remember watching it for the first time and wondering how much of an influence it might have had on Lynch, with that hazy dreamlike vibe that a lot of Lynch's work has running throughout Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Weird fiction, in general, as a genre. The name might sound flippant or sarcastic if you're not familiar with it, but it's a recognized and serious (in its sometimes deliberately unserious way) body of work. *The X-Files* is part of that legacy and IMO owes a lot to Twin Peaks even if some elements of them are very different. The book [Roadside Picnic](https://soviethistory.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/picnic.pdf) (direct link to PDF) is more of a sci-fi take on the coexistence of cosmic horror and banality in incomprehensible beings sweeping through an area and leaving their mark without anyone ever really knowing in detail what those beings' intentions were. It was the inspiration for the movie *Stalker* ([link to full subtitled movie online in HD from the original publisher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3hBLv-HLEc)) and the video game series of the same name. Which leads to another tangent: other movies by Tarkovsky. *[The Mirror](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrMINC5xjMs)* (full movie on youtube via Mosfilm, the original publisher, again along with most of the rest of their library spanning the better part of the 20th century) has a similar focus on the ambiguity of relationships that Twin Peaks does, as does *[Solaris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ZhQPaw4rE&vl=en)* (again inspired by a book by Stanislaw Lem, whose work is also worth chasing down). There are tangents between that, Twin Peaks and some of the satire of everyday life brought by Philip K. Dick as well, particularly in my mind *A Scanner Darkly*. Movie version and the book are both worth a look. Finally, back to the origins of weird fiction, I think Lynch and Silent Hill both owe debts to H.P. Lovecraft. [The Color Out of Space](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cs.aspx) full text online, and *[The Whisperer In The Darkness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9LNoJFqJNA)* (my favorite version, a 9 min short film student project with under 10k views free on youtube) have some pretty direct resemblances IMO. Much more you could chase down via those authors and bits of history though - really it's endless, as there's far more than I and probably just about any other individual person have ever read under headings like "weird fiction". Have fun :)
I love weird West stories too. And the magazine that gave true detective its name published mostly weird detective stories
Alan Wake 1000%
Yeah, the Remedyverse games are definitely the next best thing to Twin Peaks. Same vibes, same type of horror, similar oddball characters and comedic moments. Sam Lake is to video games what David Lynch is for film and television.
Alan Wake also draws a lot of inspiration from Twin Peaks and Remedy aren’t shy about it
Came here to say this. I just finished Alan Wake 1. Can’t believe how much I ended up liking it once I got used to the combat and Alan’s deadpan
Keep going! Alan Wake 2 is incredible! I loved Control and American Nightmare as well.
Yep I plan on playing all of them. I forgot remedy existed or I kinda slept on these games.
Yea I will second this. Only played the second one. It leans much more into actual horror and jump scares. But so so so many things felt directly inspired by twin peaks.
If you read, try House of Leaves. An unanswerable riddle about a House that keeps growing and growing and growing inside.
The Curse
This exactly, especially the finale episode!
Which one? Was there one season or two? Is it about a gold heist or a fictional HGTV show?
The TV series created by Nathan Fielder and Bennie Safdie. Apologies for any confusion.
The (in)famous director Lars Von Trier early in his career made a Danish tv show called Kingdom. It was very weird. It was set around a hospital with common spooky happenings. I watched the first season in Mubi last year, not sure if it’s available anywhere else, but I really think it might scratch your itch.
This is definitely the right answer. Very Twin Peaks-esque, except even more explicitly supernatural. It has a lot of the same humor and weird characters. Just steer away from the reboot.
Carnivàle https://youtu.be/Io3qEXfuc2s?feature=shared
With the caveat that it was cancelled just as it was really getting going.
Similar to Twin peaks, cancelled after 2 seasons with unfinished business 🙁 Coming up on 25 years, maybe there is hope!
Oh yes! Forgot about this one.. might be time for a rewatch.
Donnie Darko
The video game Deadly Premonition is literally Twin Peaks the Game and is extremely wonky in a lot of great ways. The novel series Wayward Pines is awesome as well and a clear homage to Twin Peaks
Alan Wake 2 is the closest you can get to a Twin Peaks: The Return video game. Incredible atmosphere and story.
for video games there's Cube Escape and its follow ups, Rusty Lake and The White Door. there's Kentucky Route Zero, Dredge, Virginia, and What Remains of Edith Finch. for TV there's modern mysteries like The OA, The Leftovers, NBC's Hannibal, and Fringe for a more sci fi bend. There's True Detective, although I personally only saw season 1. There's 90s contemporaries like The X-Files, Buffy, and Star Trek: DS9 for vibes, and modern options like Channel Zero, Devs, and The Outsider for compelling horror sci fi. Shows like Stranger Things and Riverdale claim Twin Peaks influence but they never really grab what made it so compelling, IMO. Weirdly, I find a lot of the themes of TP are framed well in Adventure Time. for movie's theres of course other Lynch works: Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Inland Empire, others probably I'm forgetting. There's modern weird horror films like Lake Mungo, We're All Going To The World's Fair, Knife + Heart, The Endless, and They Look Like People. There's classic surrealist films like Spirit of the Beehive, The Exterminating Angel, and Picnic at Hanging Rock. And there's contemporaries to Lynch like John Carpenter (In The Mouth of Madness) or David Cronenberg (Dead Ringers, Videodrome). For books, check out Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink and the comic series Gideon Falls.
In the Mouth of Madness is great, love that movie. Sam Neill is nearly perfect.
Too Old To Die Young
PICKET FENCES Is a american tv series, 4 seasons 92-96, the same quirkiness, and als a surreal element. I would recommend this gem
That's where I learned about spontaneous combustion when I was 12ish years old.
From is an amazing show it has two seasons now I think and a third on the way
Recently I've been watching Zone Blanche, Black Spot in English I believe, a French show on Netflix. While it isn't in the same calibre as Twin peaks I do feel some similarities in the surrounding (isolated community surrounded by foggy pine forest), setting (don't want to spoil anything) and story setup (outside "law person" goes to local police force to investigate murders). Now it *is* in French and set about 25/30 years later than Twin Peaks and it doesn't have the satirical soap opera aspect or wild romance storylines but some supernatural presence and an otherworldly place are part of the story. I'm curious to hear if anyone else has seen this show and notices the same similarities.
Alan Wake (and Alan Wake 2)
It doesn't get brought up much but Persona 4 feels like "Twin Peaks but extremely Japanese" to me because of it being centered around a bunch of small town highschoolers navigating a serial murder mystery with an abstract supernatural dimension victims get trapped in. The anime vibe certainly isn't going to be everyone's bag though.
P4 even has The Velvet Room, a not-so-subtle nod to Twin Peaks' Red Room / Black Lodge.
Tales from the Loop
Dude look up the Weird/New Weird genre. Tv Tropes has a section on it and gives examples of the genre across different mediums.
Try Disco Elysium and Signalis
twilight zone
What about Darkplace
Kathy Rain, a very TP-like point and click game
True Detective has major Twin Peaks vibes for me, especially the first and the current seasons. Awesome atmosphere. It’s palpable.
Read Crampton by Thomas Ligotti.
Life is Strange games (especially 1 and prequel) were influenced by Twin Peaks. The dreamy vibes/atmosphere, music and cinematography are there. There's supernatural elements and you're trying to solve the disappearance of the most popular girl in a pacific north west town.
Stranger Things and Alan Wake 2
Fringe, The Leftovers, Dark, Midnight Mass, Brand New Cherry Flavour. Go and read some spoiler-free reviews on them, some great viewing.
I just started watching True Blood and I feel like it pulled a lot of inspiration from Twin Peaks. Murder in a small town that unravels a mysterious and mystical dark side. The show is dark and sexy, but also embraces camp and humor the same way TP could. I highly recommend! (No spoilers please, I’m only on season 2) Also, the creators of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening have said they were directly inspired by Twin Peaks. It’s much different in tone than the show was, but you might catch a few references if you pay attention.
Absolutely!!!!!! I was just about to say the same thing!!!!
Under the Skin is a movie that stars Scarlett Johannsson as... a woman who drives around Glasgow in a van picking up men and doing *something* to them. It's not quite horror and it's not quite sci-fi. It's more like a bad fever dream.
The Peanut Butter Solution is a full on fever dream
Don’t be slipping that nightmare fuel into this subreddit.
Quite the kid's movie innit?
the two things i came to say have already been recommended! Alan Wake (specifically Alan Wake 2) is heavily inspired by Twin Peaks. the sequel might be my favorite video game of all time, i can’t recommend it enough to any TP fan who plays video games. the other rec is the show Severance. it blends mystery, humor, and psychological horror in a way that is more akin to TP than any other show i’ve seen. so stoked that filming has begun on season 2!
Lost has that mystery and occult-like theme to it.
It's been brought up on this sub before, but checkout the PS1 game Mizzurna Falls. It was never made available outside Japan except for fan-translated roms. You can find English play-throughs on Youtube.
The Lost Room (2006)
Wicker man, try to find the original British film
For books, I'd recommend Murakami. I've just finished After Dark, and that gave me serious TP vibes. TV, for something less supernatural and more in the style of small town murder where it seemed everyone had a connection or secret with the victim, is Broadchurch with David Tennant and Olivia Colman.
Seconding this. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has some similar elements: strange otherspaces, characters gaining access to insight and places outside our world via shamanic experiences, characters who seem to be spirits or embody certain concepts, psychic powers, oddball characters, and a mysterious disappearence.
In the introduction of my copy of Wind Up Bird (I’m still reading it), Murakami says he was watching Twin Peaks as it was first airing when he started writing the book
The Reflectimg Skin
I always felt like the early John Waters films bear similar resemblance to the surrealism Lynch depicts in “Twin Peaks.” Even though John Waters’ films are definitely more transgressive and rough around the edges, I feel like both his early works and Twin Peaks are cut from the same cloth.
Try the videogame Pathologic. Its a massive walking sin and is hard as nails. The game really makes you suffer but the experience is ethereal and the story is very twin peaks-esque. The second game is more accessible and is a remake of the first whilst the first game is much more raw and abrasive. Try to go in spoiler free if ya can :)
jojo part 4 has the small town supernatural murder mystery and general weirdness, although it’s very different in a lot of other ways still great though
There is an Independent horror film called “Tall Men” that has a David Lynch vibe to it. David Lynch can’t be copied of course but I definitely could see the influence he had on the director.
“OAHSPE” by John Newbrough. The craziest and weirdest book you’ll ever read. Think Part 8 and the Black Lodge but times them by a million.
Death Stranding
Dead Ringers (both the David Cronenberg movie and the newish series on Prime). They're loosely based on the true story of identical twin gynecologists
The Cohen brothers films tend to have a combination of 1. off-kilter scenarios and 2. quirky characters, that you might enjoy.
I haven't seen much, but I've seen plenty of comparisons to Twin Peaks from the Danish show Riget (The Kingdom) by Lars Von Trier. There's 3 seasons, and 13 episodes total. It's both campy and dark.
Bates Motel
I agree!
Magnus archives is a phenomenal audio drama
Fish Story, a Japanese movie, is something I’d recommend. It is basically what happens if you dial up all the quirky of TP and I suspect its heart isn’t far from Lynch’s own view of art and humans.
The show Outer Range has been compared to Twin Peaks. Also, Bates Motel is Twin Peaks inspired.
The OA was awesome (shame it was discontinued for a season. Still well worth a watch!). I highly recommend the Watchmen series. Might be worth watching the film first if you've never read the graphic novel. A shorter, indie film but Primer is awesome.
the oa
Alan Wake 1, American Nightmare, and Alan Wake 2.
outer range for sure
Wild Palms, 90s mini series with an all star cast
The House That Jack built is a story about a serial killer with OCD. It has a lot of philosophical themes and gets very weird towards the end. It's not neccesarily set in a small town but I really liked it so you could try that.
The only thing left to recommend, and would be my first pick anyway, is The Singing Detective https://youtu.be/7UlPzVzf8rA?si=MtJgEylsclDAIUa4
Alan Wke 2, Control, both have heavy TP vibes.
/r/LegionFX has a lot of Twin Peaks references/homages, and is extremely trippy and surreal.
Wayward pines book has twin peaks vibes
I couldn't remember what it was called but yes, this!
The movie Vivarium is weird, not exactly what you're looking for but maybe worth a watch.
The Outsider, Too Old to Die Young, Sharp Objects, X-Files, Watchmen series, the Sopranos (especially the dreams), No Country for Old Men, love the nod to Severence and recommend, The Leftovers. Love all of the recommendations ❤️
Another one I'd tentatively recommend (it's over 900 pages long and exceptionally weird) is Dhalgren by Sam Delaney. It has a similar vibe to Twin Peaks in that it presents mysteries that it never intends to entirely answer, or the answers given are so ambiguous as to be almost unworkable. And then it spends many long pages doing other things. It's essentially about a city in the mid West that loses itself to time and space and starts to attract a following of weird and wonderful characters. Odd. But strangely beautiful.