Jacob's Ladder
- Jun 11
- 2 min read
A warning upfront: the movie Jacob’s Ladder is not for everyone. As a horror film, it ranks as one of the most painfully difficult, intensely sad, nightmarish ones that I’ve ever seen. Pitch black trauma, hallucinations, a confusing spiral into insanity—the web of despair in which the main character Jacob Singer finds himself trapped traps the viewer as well. The movie is a theme park ride through a ravaged, dark corner of psychological hell—and I love it! Made in 1990, directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Tim Robbins, the movie is an artistic triumph on every level.
The story is about a soldier in the Vietnam War who returns home to civilian life, haunted by memories of something terrible that happened to him in combat. And then new hauntings prey upon him. His marriage falls apart. One of his young children dies. And the city in which he lives—a decaying, decrepit New York—seems to stalk him as well. He's nearly killed by an out-of-control subway train. A car tries to run him over him on the highway. Both times, he glimpses demon-like creatures staring at him as the vehicles they’re in speed by.
Afraid that he’s losing his mind, Jacob goes to get help from his therapist at the VA hospital, but the doctor has been killed in a car explosion. And then Jacob discovers that the hospital has no record of him ever being a patient there. Eventually Jacob learns that some of his Army buddies are experiencing the same confusing nightmare visions of being hunted by demons, and they begin to believe that something happened to all of them in Vietnam; that the Army used them as unknowing guinea pigs for a drug-induced experiment that went awry.
But the darkness that surrounds Jacob is relentless.
With such a dark storyline, there are threads of hope for Jacob to hold onto. His girlfriend Jezzie offers him a loving haven from the madness that threatens to engulf him. As does Louie, his chiropractor, who relieves Jacob’s physical pains, while also providing sage, philosophical advice to soothe his tormented soul.
But the darkness that surrounds Jacob is relentless. A party that he goes to turns wickedly dark. And when he’s attacked on the street and finds himself being wheeled into a hospital, the horrors that await him there are painted in vivid images right out of Hieronymus Bosch.
The question of what’s really happening to Jacob and what might be part of a delusional fever dream is the puzzle to solve. The climax of the film offers a provocative solution that, even then, is open to some interpretation.
As I said, you’ve been warned. But if you’re game, it’s worth it to see what Jacob’s Ladder is all about. I give it a stunning four out of four stars.
