The strange, sur­pris­ing lega­cy of Jacob’s Ladder

Released in 1990, Jacob’s Lad­der was nei­ther fail­ure nor suc­cess, being one of those films which mere­ly recouped its bud­get. Writ­ten by Bruce Joel Rubin and direct­ed by Adri­an Lyne, the film was pro­duced by inde­pen­dent stu­dio Car­ol­co Pic­tures, best known for Ter­mi­na­tor 2: Judg­ment Day, Total Recall and Basic Instinct. It also marked a change of pace for actor Tim Rob­bins, who up to this point was pri­mar­i­ly a sup­port­ing actor in com­e­dy roles. Jacob’s Lad­der exists in a genre all of its own: a meta­phys­i­cal art­house hor­ror film about a trau­ma­tised Viet­nam War vet­er­an who expe­ri­ences a series of night­mar­ish visions.

The film’s lega­cy has long since out­grown its mod­est box office impact. With­out Jacob’s Lad­der, there would be no The Sixth Sense. Dar­ren Aronofsky’s Black Swan explores sim­i­lar areas of cor­po­re­al trans­for­ma­tion. The mak­ers of the Silent Hill video game series have cit­ed Lyne’s film as a major influ­ence. Writer Massy Tad­jedin was clear­ly in awe of Jacob’s Lad­der; watch­ing Adri­an Brody thriller The Jack­et, it feels as if she just shuf­fled the pages of Rubin’s script, and changed the names and locations.

Yet it is a film that con­tin­ues to fly under the radar (an unnec­es­sary remake is due next year). So what stopped it from find­ing a wider audi­ence? For starters, there’s Lyne – a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful film­mak­er who took this gig off the back of earn­ing an Oscar nom­i­na­tion for 1987’s Fatal Attrac­tion. Suf­fice to say it was a strange career swerve, and peo­ple were sim­ply not expect­ing some­thing so vis­cer­al and dis­turb­ing from a main­stream Hol­ly­wood director.

As for Rubin, he cer­tain­ly isn’t your aver­age scriptwriter. After expe­ri­enc­ing a bad acid trip in the ​’60s, he embarked on a spir­i­tu­al quest spend­ing sev­er­al years med­i­tat­ing in Turkey, Iran, and Pak­istan. He has described Jacob’s Lad­der as a dra­mat­ic response to ​‘The Tibetan Book of Liv­ing and Dying’. Inter­viewed at the time of release, he remarked: ​“If you watch this film with your mind, try­ing to under­stand what’s going on, you’re going to be torn into a mil­lion pieces […] this movie is about the dis­so­lu­tion of a man who is dying.”

Jacob’s Lad­der is struc­tured like a fever dream, with the nar­ra­tive zigzag­ging between Viet­nam and New York; we see Jacob in com­bat, mar­ried with chil­dren, and co-habit­ing with co-work­er Jessie (Eliz­a­beth Peña). Strange crea­tures start to fol­low him – are they hal­lu­ci­na­tions or some­thing more? The spe­cial effects are the film’s USP. Lyne filmed sev­er­al scenes at a low frame rate, result­ing in a sort of blur­ry malev­o­lence (he cites Fran­cis Bacon as a key influ­ence on the film’s aesthetic).

In a hor­rif­ic par­ty scene, Jacob watch­es help­less­ly as a demon has vio­lent sex with Jessie. There are hooves and the edge of a satan­ic wing. A raven flies over­head. A sec­ond demon stares from the oppo­site side of the room. Rob­bins had a cam­era strapped to his chest, which moved with him, adding to the night­mar­ish chaos. The scene ends with a horn break­ing out of Jessie’s mouth, and Jacob on the floor, screaming.

What make this all so per­sua­sive are the per­for­mances of Rob­bins and Peña. Rob­bins plays Jacob with a boy­ish inno­cence: this is a man who lives in the light, which makes his dark descent all the more trag­ic. Peña, who sad­ly passed away in 2014 at the age of 55, should have been a big­ger star than she was. She appeared in pop­u­lar pop­corn fod­der like La Bam­ba and Rush Hour, but most­ly Hol­ly­wood didn’t know what to do with her. She brings a soul­ful sen­su­al­i­ty to Jessie, who can be kind and nur­tur­ing but also cold and con­trol­ling. There’s a sug­ges­tion the char­ac­ter is a pro­jec­tion, a com­pos­ite of all the women Jacob has ever loved.

As chi­ro­prac­tor Louis, Dan­ny Aiel­lo gets the best line in the film: ​“If you’re fright­ened of dying and you’re hold­ing on, you’ll see dev­ils tear­ing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the dev­ils are real­ly angels free­ing you from the earth.’ The fear of let­ting go is crys­tallised in a low-key scene, where Jacob is vis­it­ed in hos­pi­tal by wife Sarah (Patri­cia Kalem­ber). ​“I still love you,” she tells him, ​“what­ev­er it’s worth”.

An off-cam­era voic­es hiss­es ​“Dream on!” It’s an uncom­fort­able reminder of the task we all even­tu­al­ly face: sur­ren­der­ing love, mem­o­ry and iden­ti­ty before ascend­ing to what­ev­er realm awaits us beyond this one. In its han­dling of these dif­fi­cult themes, Jacob’s Lad­der remains a pro­found­ly spir­i­tu­al state­ment. Pret­ty impres­sive for a meta­phys­i­cal art­house hor­ror film.