DVD Release
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
R1 / NTSC DVD
Lionsgate / 1998
Directed by: Adrian Lyne
Written by: Bruce Joel Rubin
Cast: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello, Jason Alexander
Review by James Garfield
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is an American soldier in Vietnam who receives a pretty nasty bayonet wound during a sudden attack. We flash to his post-Vietnam life as a mailman, haunted by memories of the war as well as the loss of his young son prior to the war. Soon Jacob begins glimpsing demonic creatures out of the corner of his eye; contact with his former platoon mates confirms that they have been having similar experiences. Are the former military men experiencing the lingering effects of drugs tested on them during the war? Has the supernatural genuinely invaded Jacob’s life? Or has he just crossed Owl Creek Bridge?
Jacob’s Ladder provided a prime example for me of the value of reviewing movies. I originally saw it at age 13, upon its first release, and found the experience too unsettling to think very favorably of it. In the nearly 18 intervening years, I saw movies that were far more unnerving and disturbing, and I returned recently to the film a rather more jaded person. I was still surprised at how bleak Ladder was for a major studio release, but I now found the film merely scary rather than totally disturbing. It’s very much the dark twin of Ghost, another metaphysically-themed film written by Bruce Joel Rubin and released earlier in 1990. Hollywood usually stays away from films so totally rooted in psychological subjectivity, so stuff like Ladder comes along once in a blue moon. In addition to the intellectual demands Ladder makes, other praiseworthy elements include the performances, particularly that of Tim Robbins, and Maurice Jarre’s score. And the special effects creatures, directly inspired by the grotesqueries of Francis Bacon, are memorably uncanny—in the years since the film, the device of having the creature’s heads vibrate rapidly has been copied many times.
A frightening and thought-provoking psychological horror film; not for casual horror viewers.
