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Is it Horror? “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990)
Jacob’s Ladder is what happens when a director coming off a huge hit tackles one of Hollywood’s most baffling screenplays and pukes all over it.
I saw this film when it came out in 1990, but, like many films before 1990, I have little to no memory as to why I saw it. Perhaps someone invited me. Perhaps I had nothing better to do. I hadn’t seen Adrian Lyne’s prior film, Fatal Attraction — still haven’t, to this day — and had only seen Tim Robbins in Bull Durham. So if they weren’t the reasons, what was?
I’ll never know. Lyne’s film has been appraised in some circles as horror, though it’s also considered an anti-war film with supernatural elements, a kind of Sixth Sense for peaceniks. For screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Brainstorm), it was a religious experience, a chance to explore what lies between Heaven and Hell. It’s also as if a kitchen sink of tropes had been thrown against a celluloid wall.
So is Jacob’s Ladder horror?
Quick synopsis. Jacob “Jake” Singer (Robbins), a Vietnam vet who’s been honorably discharged after surviving a bayonet attack, is now a postal worker in filthy, 1970s “drop dead” New York. He’s married to Jezebel (a frequently unclothed Elizabeth Peña) — his second marriage, after his first to Sarah (Patricia Kalember) dissolved in the wake of the loss of their child, Gabriel…
