Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder is frightening, tender and occasionally too eager to explain itself. Tim Robbins gives its nightmare a human centre, though Bruce Joel Rubin’s script presses its religious ideas harder than it needs to.
Jacob’s Ladder works because Adrian Lyne takes a frightened man seriously, even when the things surrounding him threaten to become a gruesome distraction. It is an effective, often moving horror film, with a script that sometimes talks too earnestly about matters the images have already made us feel. Bruce Joel Rubin brings war, trauma and religious questions into the nightmare, asking for more than a succession of scares. The film is strongest when those concerns remain close to Jacob and his trouble believing what is in front of him.
The subway sequence is a good measure of Lyne’s control. Jeffrey L. Kimball’s cinematography makes the space oppressive without stripping away its familiarity, and Brian Morris’s production design gives the grotesque effects a credible setting. We were frightened because an ordinary journey had become unsafe before we could work out what was wrong. The effects sharpen that fear, but the setting has already done much of the work. The sequence makes the journey itself an ordeal.
Robbins is the reason to stay with Jacob when the film risks becoming a collection of alarming sights. He makes confusion credible without playing every moment as a prelude to panic, allowing his fear to build. We believe that this man is trying to understand what he experiences, which matters more than making him an efficient guide through the mystery. His vulnerability also lets the film deal with trauma without reducing Jacob to a case for us to diagnose.
Tom Rolf’s editing makes the changes between reality and nightmare difficult to anticipate. A cut can deny us the chance to settle, and uncertainty about what we are watching becomes part of the fright. The quick glimpses of demons are more contentious: sometimes the speed increases their menace, and sometimes we become aware of being prodded into a reaction. Rolf handles the larger shifts more persuasively, letting the film stay disorientating without requiring Robbins to explain each change for us.
Rubin’s biblical references can be insistent, and the dialogue sometimes seems to be instructing us in how seriously to take the film. Maurice Jarre’s music is effective at sustaining unease, though its contribution to the more solemn passages feels less necessary. We have already been given ample reason to care about Jacob, so the additional prompting can become a nuisance. Religious ideas belong in this story, but Rubin does not always give them room to be questioned by the people speaking.
Psychological horror can become tiresome when the only pleasure left is solving the puzzle. Lyne largely avoids that by keeping bodily fear and grief present alongside the uncertainty, so that working out what is happening never becomes the only reason to watch. The practical effects help: their grotesqueness feels close enough to human bodies to be upsetting, even when the cutting is aggressive. There are passages where the script’s solemnity requires patience, but the fear remains persuasive after we have had time to examine it. Watch it with someone prepared to stay quiet during the film and talk afterwards.
