Eraserhead (1977)

In my last post I mentioned that for the week of 3/3/25-3/9/25 I’ve seen David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) and Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17 (2025). I’ll be writing about my time watching the former, which was at my home on 3/4/25 if I remember correctly. I watched the film upon coming home from work and I don’t recall anything particularly eventful happening that day. I likely left work on-time, otherwise I wouldn’t have thought of watching the movie. Most of the time, my family goes to sleep around 9:30 pm; I prefer to watch movies in the 2nd floor living room and am often mindful of how the TV’s glow and sound might bother everyone as they sleep. For this film, my format of choice was the 2014 blu-ray released by Criterion.; I have no complaints with the quality of the transfer and the special features were plentiful, including director’s commentary and a handful of David Lynch’s short films prior to Eraserhead. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve owned the blu-ray for at least a year and have never seen the movie up until this point. At the time of purchase, I haven’t seen any of David Lynch’s work, aside from Dune (1984) and I wanted to change that moving forward. In fact, I did see the follow-up to this film, The Elephant Man (1980), last year and thought it was pretty good. Indeed with Lynch’s passing at the beginning of the year, I felt more of a push to watch his feature film debut and more of his work going forward. As such, expect to see a couple more posts around Lynch’s work in the future (probably).

I think Eraserhead can best be described as a surreal horror film. I always struggle with how to define horror and classify what movies fit into the genre. However, I can safely say that, based on the vibes in this movie, I wouldn’t call this a “psychological thriller” as some people that clown on the horror genre would with movies they like. In this movie, we follow a man named Henry Spencer (Jack Nance). Henry lives in an undisclosed industrial cityscape, though if you know of the production of this film, you can guess as to what American city inspired the setting. Henry’s girlfriend, Mary (Charlotte Stewart) informs him that she is pregnant, though she is not sure if she bore a human child. The couple move in together in Henry’s apartment, but eventually Mary leaves, leaving Henry to care for “the child”. That’s about as best as I can get into the story as it becomes difficult to navigate around what happens in the film without getting into spoilers.

Going into what works for me in this film, I’ll start off with the sound design. It is truly phenomenal. While this film does have striking visual setpieces, and the black & white photography serves the industrial setting well, it is the diegetic sound effects that really shine and serve to depict an oppressive and unnerving setting. The film frequently features sounds like a running apartment radiator or the hum of outdoor pipes and machinery. Things like this in other movies are often seen as background filler noise or foley. In Eraserhead however, these low-level or background sounds often build to soundscapes that color their respective scenes with vibes in the same way that a traditional non-diegetic soundtrack would. I’ll also give my compliments to the production design and overall art direction. From the home of Mary’s parents and Henry’s apartment to the outdoor enviroments, urban decay and industrial overgrowth is plain to see. Appliances, furniture, and accessories strewn about in these spaces all have a lived in feeling. In addition, while watching the film, I thought about the weight of a lot of these items and how they can probably crush me. It sounds strange thinking that out loud, but I dunno; in this world it feels like something as simple as a table fan can hurt me. The industrial setting as depicted in this movie looks to be a world that I wouldn’t want to live in, much less raise a child in. Combine the visual and sound design in this film and you get a nightmare world that invites the viewer to project their own thoughts and fears in. Lastly, the movie is also surprisingly funny, particularly in the beginning. Based on what I knew about this movie from looking at the poster, reading the synopsis and a little on development on this film while reading about other films, I thought that this would be a dark and bleak film. As such, I was pleasantly surprised by and appreciated the bits of levity here and there. 

You’ll note that I haven’t really delved into deeper analysis of the film’s themes. I’ma be real with you chief, while I have my own assumptions, I can’t confidently state what exactly Eraserhead is about as a whole. Maybe it was me watching the film after the end of a shift at work, or I didn’t water my brain that morning. Nevertheless, I really fucked with the vibes that were emanating from this film, even if I didn’t fully understand what was going on. In that way it’s not too dissimilar to how I feel about Longlegs (2024). It also helps that this movie is fairly short with an hour and a half runtime. I’m not sure how I would feel if this film was longer. All that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and give this a Best Movie Ever. If you haven’t seen it and can fuck with vibepiece movies, I’d encourage you to give this a watch. My next post will be on Mickey 17. Have a good night!