1986's , the neo-noir thriller from, is finding success on streaming following the death of its great director. The movie, starring Isabella Rossellini and Kyle MacLachlan, has climbed to the list of most-watched films on Max. Blue Velvet stars Rossellini and MacLachlan alongside Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Hope Lange, Frances Bay, Brad Dourif, and Jack Nance, among others. Written and directed by Lynch, Blue Velvet is a classic thriller that follows Jeffrey Beaumont, who becomes part of a criminal conspiracy that involves a lounge singer named Dorothy and a violent gangster named Frank Booth.
The synopsis reads as follows:
"The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child."
Released in the middle of the 1980s, the same year as Top Gun, Platoon, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Blue Velvet was as uncomfortable as a pebble in the shoe for conservative Hollywood, but it was acclaimed almost universally (with the notable exception of Roger Ebert). Here was Lynch unveiling a dark side of the country, perfectly manifested in morally corrupt characters that went from the questionably quirky to an erratic representation of pure human evil.
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At the Academy Awards, Lynch was nominated for Best Director, and at the Golden Globes, the nods came in for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Hopper). Blue Velvet swept that year's National Society of Film Critics Awards. Today, it's still as prominent as it once was, especially after an incredible 4K release from The Criterion Collection, but the newly found love on streaming is most likely related to Lynch's passing a few days ago.
Lynch, who had been diagnosed with emphysema a couple of years ago, had to be evacuated from his Los Angeles home after the wildfire disaster affected the area where he lived. Days later, he was pronounced dead because of the complications caused by the smoke surrounding his home. He was 78 years old (he would've turned 79 tomorrow, Jan. 20, 2025).
None of Lynch's films are particularly conventional, except for The Straight Story and The Elephant Man. Outside those, Blue Velvet is about as close to being a "normal" film in terms of narrative structure as any other he made. But make no mistake: the steamy thriller may be one of Lynch's more normal films, but this doesn't make it any friendlier.
It's a deeply disturbing movie to watch. Not because it gets too graphic, but because Lynch blurs the line between surface reality and the dark underworld he explores (like the conscious and the subconscious), and it's hard to feel safe when Beaumont inevitably falls into a grounded version of hell. The sexual and emotional violence is shocking, but Lynch doesn't need gore and jump scares to make Lumberton, North Carolina, a nightmarish setting. This could have been your white picket fence neighborhood, where bad things happened, and you just didn't know it. Blue Velvet is streaming on the Criterion Channel and on Max through the link below:
Written and directed by David Lynch, Blue Velvet is a 1986 Thriller and Mystery film. Starring Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini, the film follows a young man that becomes embroiled in a crime.
