Jacob's Ladder is a skillfull multi- layered film and a believable one. While watching it, I couldn't help but think about the Buddhist philosophy that says after someone passes, be kind, say good things because the person who passed is confused- they do not know they are dead. So, here you have a perfectly blue -collar Tim Robbins, a postal clerk, who, after having been to Viet Nam, begins to have horrific flashbacks. He doesn't understand what he is seeing or feeling, but begins to believe that while in Viet Nam, he and his unit might have been human guinea pigs for government drug testing. He contacts his old war buddies, and there is a moment when you exhale, thinking that he's found the root of his problems, but suddenly, his hallucinations become constant and even more terrifying, until he's living in two different worlds and realities. They say that when you die your life passes in front of your eyes- you wonder which one here, he slips in and out of each reality, Elizabeth Pena, is his wife in an average NY apartment, now it is a blonde and he seems to live in the suburbs. The one constant is Danny Aiello, the chiropractor, who, alone in this movie brings him relief from his pain- his angel. This movie makes me cry- while terrifying, it has an intensely sad, but spiritual undertone and you really feel the pain and desperation the character is going through. It is the story of a man who won't let go, whether because of fear or confusion- a man who has lost his son, and is freed by the little boy who is no longer afraid, who teaches him how to climb Jacob's Ladder.

I thought Jacob's Ladder was an awesome movie, but i didn't get some of it. Was he dead the whole time and the life he was living throught the movie imaginary? But other than that it is a really good movie. Go out and rent it.

Viet Nam vet Jacob Singer's life has turned into a nightmare from which he cannot seem to wake. At any time, his mundane life may be fractured by bizarre, frightening apparitions that are becoming increasingly menacing. All of the people who are important to him - his lover, his ex-wife, his kids, his V.A. psychiatrist, his old army pals, seem to be shifting and transforming, becoming part of the nightmare and leaving him with no secure port in the tortured storm that his life has become. As he seeks to avoid madness, he searches for answers in his past, trying to unravel the truth behind a mysterious and terrible event that happened to him and his unit in Viet Nam.
`Jacob's Ladder' is a deeply disturbing and thought provoking film that effectively pulls the audience into the terror that Singer is experiencing. By shredding linear plot, it leaves the audience as confused and unmoored as the protagonist is, allowing them to fully empathize with his plight. Its demonic apparitions are truly chilling, like something that may have come from the depths of your own nightmares. A scene where Singer is transported on a gurney into the bowls of an increasingly bizarre and hellish hospital ranks as one of the most frightening in all of cinematic history. It is adult, psychological horror at its best.
Tim Robbins gives an effective performance as the protagonist. His Jacob Singer is an ordinary every man, who is slowly slipping into utter confusion and fear of madness and death. Elizabeth Pena is outstanding as his lover, in a role by turns playful and menacing, but always incredibly sexy. Danny Aiello gives the best performances of his career as Singer's chiropractor/mentor/confidant - the only person in his crumbling life who offers him hope of salvation from the hell he is descending into.
`Jacob's Ladder' is the only film that has ever truly frightened me as an adult. In addition to being terrifying, it is intelligent and thought provoking. I first saw this film when it was in the theaters fifteen years ago, and have watched it many times since, and it has never lost its edge for me. I count it among my top ten all time favorite films, and I enthusiastically recommend it.

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This film depicts a Vietnam veteran's post-war descent into hell. His 'hell' basically boils down to his waking up one day to realize he's no longer married to a white woman and raising a white son (a delightful pre-Party Monster MacCauley Culkin) in the suburbs. Instead he's now living with a woman of ambiguous hispanic origin in urban NYC. Hell is different things to different people. Personally my hell occurred back in early 2001 when I drank five cans of Sparks and ate a large batch of some brownies handed to me by frizzy-haired man wearing a pink headband, but thats a story for another time. FOUR STARS.

Jacob Singer is doing OK.

For one thing, he has a safe job: postal clerk. Safe is important just now, because it's New York in 1974. You know, back in the good ol' days of double digit inflation, urban violence; the time the City was feeling the Heat, the air stank and reeked of sweat and death and misery. A few years after Kitty Genovese was slaughtered in the court of her tenement, and fifty people looked on and did nothing.

That New York. A Society cresting the wave of urban ruin, teetering over the Abyss.

So yeah, in this case, safe is good. Stable is good. Paid twice a month with benefits is good. If only it weren't for the things Singer has started to see in his seedy, decrepit New York borough. Things that lurk in dark alleyways, things that gibber from crowded stalls littered in cramped and filthy transit stations.

That, for sure, is Bad.

H.P. Lovecraft observed that "of Man's fears, the greatest is the fear of the Unknown." Adrian Lyne, hot from his successes as a chronicler of the sanguine effects of dangerous indiscretions (9 & 1/2 Weeks) and marital infidelity (Fatal Attraction), could have done anything with his newfound fame and power---and moved boldly and effectively into Lovecraft territory with this nasty mix of pure grue and sheer terror.

"Jacob's Ladder" is one of the creepiest films ever made, a film so gut-twistingly nasty that it can reduce the most steely-eyed, jaded horror vet to tears and cow-eyed panic.

Tim Robbins is Jacob Singer, a Vietnam veteran now returned home from the war and working as a postal worker---and seeing strange, nightmarish things. A homeless man in the subway has a tentacle for a hand, which withdraws, wormlike, into his tattered sleeve; a car tries to run Singer down on a lonely bridge, a featureless, quivering face pressed up against the dirty glass; a dance party turns into a shadow-haunted, blood-drenched abbatoir with a tentacled horror.

Even that wouldn't be that bad if it weren't for Singer's `other life' making housecalls: Singer keeps "waking up" into another life---one with a secure career, a house, a family, and adorable little Macaulay Culkin as his son. Another life removed miles and years from his dingy, increasingly insane postal clerk life.

Lyne keeps up the pace, as Singer tries to make sense of his descent into nightmare. Is he slipping into madness? Is this the result of being doused with a nerve agent in Vietnam, code-named "Jacob's Ladder", tested on GIs with the intent to make them killing machines---and succeeding wildly, with the slight side-effect of turning their blood frenzy on each other? Is there a government conspiracy to silence him? And which of the two lives is 'real'? Will the real Jacob Singer please stand up?

True horror films capture that sense of active but unseen malice, and build on a palpable atmosphere that is brooding, destructive, and malignant---and that is why there are so few of them. Jacob's Ladder is that rarest of film, a visual descent into a nightmare in which the horror boils directly out of the atmosphere, and is even more effective and masterful in that there is---at least, not initially---an identifiable villain or source of evil.

Robbins is well cast as a disintegrating man, nonetheless staving off the increasingly aggressive horrors while trying to make sense of them: he is perfect for the role, his doughy white face with its slab of pasty hair saying everything and nothing. Elizabeth Pena is also excellent as the postal employee (Jezebel) he shares a squalid apartment with, delivering a performance that is sensual, supportive, but somehow malignant, poisoned, fervid and diseased. Danny Aiello is solid, as always, in an intriguing role as Robbins's masseur; even Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has a small part as an intimidated attorney trying to help Robbins and his fellow veterans make sense of their damnation.

But good acting aside, the real star of Jacob's Ladder is the cinematography (Jeff Kimball, whose work here gave him a crack at "True Romance" and "Mission Impossible 2") and the malignant atmosphere. The onslaught of horrific, initially subtle, and truly nasty images that Lyne cooks up rank as some of the more unsettling in horror film history, and the sleazy, decrepit New York of the 1970's accentuates the film's nastiness and adds to the film's edginess.

Jacob's Ladder is like waking up in an unfamiliar bed, getting a blast of mace in the face, and then being dumped in a bathtub full of ice by unfriendly, anonymous hands---all in inky darkness---only to hear the whine of a buzzsaw in the dark reaches of the night.

Enjoy.

JSG