Jacob's Ladder (1990)
1990
R
113 Minutes
A traumatized Vietnam war veteran finds out that his post-war life isn't what he believes it to be when he's attacked by horned creatures in the subway and his dead son comes to visit him...
User Review
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Jacob's Ladder is a hallucinogenic psychological thriller that made myself hallucinate. Another film that has garnered cult status over the years, more so for its unique nightmarish flashback narrative structure. I honestly had to sit in silence for a good ten minutes and attempt to string some words together to surmise this film. Simply put: "A confusing mystery of confusing confusion". *sigh*...I'm going to need my notebook next time. Jacob is wounded during the Vietnam war, years later he starts to see hallucinations and experience depressing flashbacks which leads him to investigate the sudden mental visions. I mean...how do I even collate adjectives and superlatives to create a review for this? It's so bizarrely executed that it left me questioning if this was a hidden masterpiece or just difficult for the sake of melting the brains of the audience. Currently, I sit in the middle. It's an intriguing perspective into a heightened mind during a visceral heart-pumping experience such as the Vietnam War, where secret experiments with hallucinogens were utilised as a means to increase aggression. That aside, the primary appeal to this thriller is the intricate narrative structure. Is it real? Fabricated? Nostalgic memories or malicious nightmares? The careful construct of the plot will leave you questioning every scene up until its conclusion (which still left me scratching my head occasionally). It's rapid pacing, consistently blending ghostly fantasies with reality, which certainly needs to be adjusted to. The constant transitions between flashbacks is jarring, particularly for the first half, but stick with it and all will be answered. Robbins gives yet another exceptional performance as a man undergoing psychological delusions. My main negative is the fact it was so...how to put it..."in your face", that actually I cannot remember the majority of scenes. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, you don't remember slotting each piece in but you do acknowledge the final product. Jacob's Ladder is just that, an absurdly hallucinogenic jigsaw puzzle that definitely needs to be revisited again.0 member like this review.
