The latest offering from David Lynch, the first in nearly five years, is a slow, ponderous, ultimately unsuccessful exercise in cerebral nihilism. Bill Pullman plays a tortured sax player who begins to receive mysterious videotapes that intimate dark things about his wife (Patricia Arquette). Then he seems to kill her and turn into Balthazar Getty. (You kind of have to be there.) This is Lynch's most challenging, experimental film since making his debut with Eraserhead, but it's also among his weakest. Perhaps the biggest flaw may be the jettisoning of the strand of dark humor that has run throughout his work. Lost Highway is as somber and oppressive as a Presbyterian sermon, and though it's visually impressive, so was the last video from Bush, and this is about as emotionally engaging.