Jacob's Ladder (1990)

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.

I finally saw this movie. It's impossible to obtain for some reason and I saw it at a friend's movie shelf.We put it in and your like Alice sucked down the rabbit hole. You literally do not know if Tim's characters is in the real world or (re)living one of his psychotic attacks or is Dreaming. You're constantly jerked around in this maze of insanity. It's subtexts post-partum grieve, psychosis, helplessness and inevitability are very strong elements that are played with in a grotesque yet very mature and refined way.And when you think you've finally figured out where the exits of this maze of madness is then you find yourself in a dead end.It's not an easy watch especially for anyone who's suffered a panic attack let alone a psychotic attack. This is as real as psychological horror gets.

What can I say, this is one of the best films ever made and the ONLY film I've have had to watch again immediately after it finished. It was after this second viewing that I finally got what was going on.The whole film hinges on what's real and what Jacob is imagining. All the way through you think reality is the parts of the film that are set in what appears to be the present, with Jacob holding down a job and having scary visions of demons, and that the 'flashbacks' he keeps having about Vietnam and being on the stretcher in the helicopter are memories. Then, at the end, BOOM you realise reality is that he's on the helicopter and he's dying. He's clinging to life, drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to fill in a life he imagines he would have once he returns home after the war. The 'demons' he sees are because he hasn't made his peace and he feels guilty about the death of his son. this is perfectly summed up by Danny Aiello's character Louis when he says: "The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and... 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. It's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all. So don't worry, okay? Okay?" It takes the spirit of his dead son to come and tell him it's OK and he doesn't blame him to enable him to make his peace and let go.Totally blew my mind when I saw it all those years ago, and remains a completely underrated film in my view. See it!

This movie is outstanding. It's scary in your creepy, thriller, and psychosis kind of way. However, this movie is also scary in the fact that it reveals that government secrets do exist. They're not just a bunch of jive. In the movie, the main character Jacob is shown in early Vietnam, wounded and winding down to unconsciousness. He eventually wakes up in the "post Vietnam War," to find out his son and his family are okay. He lives a "normal" life as a mailman in New York City. Then, he starts getting these weird visuals, people with tails and foreign body structures. Eventually, they all turn into monsters. Then one day, he wakes up in a bed next to a woman he knew before he met his wife; he's all confused about this. He starts living in two alternate realities, with visions of occurrences that aren't quite clear, or that contain hellish creatures and settings. In one of his realities, he calls all of his Vietnam buddies to see if they're experiencing the same situations he's going through. Lone and behold, they're all experiencing "it." They all thought they would think each individual would think they were nuts if they admitted it, but they soon establish that they're not nuts among each other.Jacob soon finds out through his dream that a chemist had been experimenting with a new drug in order to make super soldiers out of the Army. The test was selected of a small platoon in the Vietnam jungle. It worked alright; so good that the whole platoon killed each other afterwords. it filled everyone with super human rage.You think all of this is fiction, but it's not. Everything that happened was of Jacob's self conscience, unwilling to let go of his family. He's actually dying in a Vietnam medical facility, pumped full of this drug. He is actually living in his self conscience. This movie is very creepy. There is a synopsis at the end that verifies the testing of this drug on Vietnam soldiers during the war. It also states that the Pentagon still tries to deny the authorization of this testing/strategy. The Pentagon doesn't want to take any responsibility (hmmm, sound like American politicians to me). I will let the viewer experience what happens in the end. I don't want to spoil too much. This movie is outstanding. At the end, I was just like...."wow." I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone.