ABCs of Horror 3: "J" Is for Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Paste’s ABCs of Horror 3 is a 26-day project that highlights some of our favorite horror films from each letter of the alphabet. The only criteria: The films chosen can’t have been used in our previous Century of Terror, a 100-day project to choose the best horror film of every year from 1920-2019, nor previous ABCs of Horror entries. With many heavy hitters out of the way, which movies will we choose?

It is no great revelation to note that war is hell, but considering the way that generational military conflicts are able to haunt our psyches for decades to come, it’s actually sort of surprising that the American horror film genre has seemingly infrequently collided with the military/war movie. There are some, of course, using the backdrop of pop-culturally popular conflicts–by which we so often mean World War II–as their setting, if only because those rascally Nazis make for easy, recognizable villains, especially considering Hitler’s real-world fascination with the occult. The likes of Overlord, The Keep, Shadow in the Cloud or Frankenstein’s Army would fall into this category, but they tend to be relatively lightweight affairs–pulpy monster movies that aim to titillate more than genuinely horrify or disturb their audience. Many is the actual “war movie” that ultimately gets at the stress, shock and trauma of armed conflict and particularly the years that follow it, but few are the full-on horror movies that embrace these more mature, sober aspects. Except, of course, for Jacob’s Ladder.

Perhaps that’s why the 1990 psychological horror experiment from director Adrian Lyne still feels like such a novel one-and-only, 34 years later. Jacob’s Ladder, anchored by its empathetic lead performance from Tim Robbins, is a distressing, despairing, extremely painful journey through the mind and the soul, though one that also contains a kernel of hope. It’s powerfully acted from start to finish, imaginatively morbid, and never anything short of compelling. There’s nothing else quite like it, though it does share some DNA with the likes of Carnival of Souls or The Twilight Zone’s classic quasi-episode An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. But even if some of this same territory has been previously touched on, it was never done so viscerally as it is here.

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Robbins is playing American infantryman Jacob Singer, a Vietnam War vet living in 1975 New York, who several years earlier experienced the inexplicable and horrific destruction of his platoon during the conflict. Indeed, this is how we enter the film, in a genuinely disturbing ambush scene that we frequently return to in spurts throughout. What makes the sequence so unsettling isn’t necessarily the expected violence of bullets and bombs, however, but the elements you can in no way see coming–the way members of Jacob’s squad are seemingly struck down by other maladies in the chaos, like sudden seizures, pox and mental collapse, like plagues being visited on them from on high. This sense of sudden, divine (or infernal) retribution is positively eerie, as is the speed with which things entirely fall apart. One moment, there’s a squad of friends ribbing each other, building esprit de corps. The next moment, it’s a charnel house.

Jacob, however, is now back home, removed from the conflict for a few years after his grievous wounding. And to his credit, he’s really not as inherently and dramatically “haunted” in his demeanor as you might expect Robbins to play the character, no picture of the PTSD-wracked vet unable to function or build connections. He’s actually surprisingly charming, projecting a quiet warmth and sociability, a surprising openness to new experiences. Jacob doesn’t seem to be lost in the past even though he would have every right to be after losing his friends and his pre-war family; he’s trying his best to move forward. He’s found new love, and he wants to make the best of the meager life that’s been given back to him. He’s trying. But the world simply just won’t let him get away with it; it’s as if his every surrounding resents Jacob and begrudges him any iota of happiness or peace. The city itself has declared war on the man, despite his best efforts to find a harmless role within it.

This feeling is encapsulated within a uniquely seedy, derelict, abandoned depiction of New York City, exemplified by the inhospitable subway station that Jacob mistakenly steps out into in his haste to get away from the other subway denizens. Wherever he turns, exits are locked and padlocked, forcing him to traverse the rails themselves even as another subway car begins its approach. The suspense is dreadful as it bears down on him, as is the casual disdain of the broken system that forced him into such action in the first place. How can this setting foster any dignity in human life? How can you retain hope, when every sight you encounter is repulsive and alienating? What do you do when you don’t recognize any humanity in the faces you encounter every day? Jacob runs the gauntlet in every daily outing, casually sauntering past the burned out wrecks of cars parked on the side of the road, just left there by the city to rot in perpetuity. The message is clear: None of this is getting fixed. Anyone who might care has already been preyed on by this place.

Suffice to say, as the world around him becomes more and more hostile, Jacob’s seeming descent into madness is hard to witness. Jacob’s Ladder boasts innovatively unsettling practical effects that drive these sequences home, whether it’s seeming hallucinations of his girlfriend being sexually assaulted by a reptilian monster, or a journey into the bowels of a hellish hospital full of the maimed, destitute souls who were once his brothers in arms. Even when Jacob finds some compatriots, it does little to help matters. You would think that finding support would alleviate some of the shame and paranoia of a world that seems dead set against you, but in this case it only illustrates that even together, these men seemingly have no chance, powerless against their fates and the forces collaborating to destroy them. Together or apart, individual or collective, they’re little more than dust in the wind.

Jacob’s Ladder is a harrowing example of psychological horror, a nerve-wracking experience that clues the audience in on some infinitesimal slice of real-life trauma that has been with us since the dawn of time. It deserves to be remembered as one of the singularly bleak, unforgettable films of the 1990s.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film writing.

ABCs of Horror 3: “J” Is for Jacob’s Ladder (1990)