Jacob’s Ladder

1990 Directed by Adrian Lyne

Horror Marathon Day 27 Film 42

The government is out to get a former Vietnam soldier that has been experimented on. This conspiracy unfolds in a manner of flashbacks and forwards- even leaving one to wonder if he's just hallucinating the whole thing altogether. There are some scenes with spectacular tension- like him being submerged in ice water or going through an insane asylum, but most of the film concentrates on this yearning for a place of normalcy and calm.

There are some horrific splices of horror, but they come so quickly and fast that they don’t really have any context- like a jolt of electricity that soon fades any recall of what you've seen. More could have gone into the history of the Vietnam war, but every scene seems to push the audience off its center- creating as much confusion as the character is experiencing. Because of the quick resolution the film loses all of the interesting qualities of inescapable horror- and feels as edgy with the cinematography as a 90s industrial music video.