"Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin once dreamt that he'd gotten off a train and ended up trapped in a subway station with no exits. The only way out was "through the dark tunnel...into some kind of awful hell." Out of his nightmarish vision emerged Jacob's Ladder (1990), a tragic, terrifying portrait of a mind on the edge and what pushed it there."
"As the film progresses, he's plagued by paranoia and hallucinations, the world of the film growing increasingly disorienting and oppressive as it mirrors his fragmented mental state. Demonic creatures torment Jacob, who begins suspecting he's part of a government conspiracy and coverup. An outlier in director Adrian Lyne's filmography of erotic thrillers such as Fatal Attraction (1987) and Indecent Proposal (1993), the bodies in Jacob's Ladder are instead grotesque, even unnervingly inhuman."
"Waiting outside a theatre in Westwood, California, hoping to hear audience's reactions during the film's opening weekend, Rubin saw an irate moviegoer run out and yell, "If I ever meet the guy who wrote that movie, I'll kill him!' Not a great sign. Though the writer had pitched Jacob's Ladder as a serious "art film," the studio marketed it as a traditional horror movie, which he came to believe hurt its commercial prospects."
Jacob's Ladder (1990) follows Jacob Singer, a Vietnam veteran haunted by violent flashbacks, crippling grief over his youngest son's death, and escalating paranoia. Nightmarish visions and grotesque, inhuman bodies invade his perception, pushing the film into surreal, oppressive territory that mirrors his fragmented mental state. Demonic figures and suspicions of a government conspiracy complicate reality and hallucination, producing a disorienting puzzle-like narrative. The film was born from Bruce Joel Rubin's dream and performed modestly at the box office, hampered by mis-marketing as a conventional horror film. A new 4K restoration aims to intensify the film's vivid mindscapes.
Read at Inverse
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