“…If you’re frightened of dying 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…”

As part of STUDIOCANAL’s Cult Classics range, 1990’s Jacob’s Ladder arrives with a new 4K restoration as well as a new featurette – to celebrate 35 years since its release. Directed by Adrian Lyne, who’d had Flashdance and Fatal Attraction on his CV beforehand, this was quite the turn to the psychological as Bruce Joel Rubin’s script (who’d also written Ghost), explores existential themes through visual fever dreams and an unsettling atmosphere, laden with nightmarish moments that switch the viewer between reality and the question of it.

In the film, we follow Tim Robbins’ spiritually scarred Jacob Singer, a Vietnam veteran whose mind has become altered by his experiences during the war, and now trying to cope with the fallout back home in New York City. The film opens in 1971 and Jacob [nicknamed the Professor by his peers] are in Vietnam, waiting in the jungle for an unknown skirmish. What quickly occurs is a brutal representation of war, with an instant attack of a nature so frenzied it’s impossible to tell who’s fighting who, plus there’s something upsetting the minds of fellow soldiers, where people are seen to be holding their heads and screaming in chaos before collapsing.

What they’re under attack from, we don’t see, but death is clear – and during the chaos Jacob is stabbed and as he passes out, we jump to a few years later as he wakes up startled and alone, sat in a NYC Subway car reading Albert Camus’ The Stranger. As he reaches out to other passengers to check whether he has missed his stop, he realises that something isn’t right, and strange things are happening. Eventually hopping off at his station, he realises he’s locked in and can’t get out, and while there is an exit, he must cross the subway lines to do so. While he does begin to cross, a subway train appears and as it passes, we see what he’s seeing in the windows; faceless, contorted beings that he has maybe seen before.

At its core, Jacob’s Ladder is a visceral experience of a man who’s apparently losing his mind or, at least, trying to stay sane in a disturbing world that’s making him question everything the peculiar things he sees. Neither reinforced nor dismissed by his girlfriend Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña), the question from the start is whether his delusions and hallucinations, that are flipping his day-to-day between his life ‘now’ and Vietnam, are tangible to only him, to those around him, or maybe they’re not reality at all. We don’t understand the intensity, yet numerous options are offered of a surreal and fascinating nature.

One thing we know is true within Jacob’s Ladder is that it’s smartly scattered with iconography and existentialist suggestion. They mostly concerning Judeo-Christian beliefs, but equally in the unstable equilibrium of the space we consider to be heaven and hell, whatever your beliefs. And whichever shape of mentality you believe for Jacob, it’s evident that the director and writer worked to explore those deep definitions, with a particular focus on the nature of demons in relation to the breakdown of the unconscious and subconscious mind.

Biblical-related names and visions are deftly incorporated in amongst the script and narrative, but there’s nothing subtle about what you’ll see, and how the dark and light are brought to comprehension, as if we’re in a form of purgatory with Jacob and fully immersed in his journey. While we’re in the representation of the religious, and this was my first visit to Jacob’s Ladder, I didn’t expect a somewhat modern depiction of neurological, let alone how metaphorical or literal monsters are realised on screen. In my thoughts of purgatory, there’s a scene where Jake’s hand is read by a palmist and she tells him he’s dead, which merges into a demon party dance that’s so visceral and intense, that the outcome suggests further analysis. After an astonishingly realised sequence, Jacob collapses from all he has seen and is taken home with a deep, burning fever. Once there, he’s submerged into an ice bath by Jezebel because although he’s burning up, he believes he’s freezing, but the very nature of needing to be cooled down, and the outcome of this, suggest a close encounter with hell itself.

On the flipside, there are angels involved trying to pull him in the other direction, with a key character being Danny Aiello’s Louis, his chiropractor who features with a glow above him, as if it were a halo. Louis also saves Jacob twice, not just from his back problems, but from a situation where he could easily be lost amongst the crazy. The trip between ‘then/now/the apparent’ reality switches so effectively, it occurs before you’ve noticed – which is difficult to achieve without becoming jarring and yet, even after multiple ‘wake up’ moments, you stay with this curious non-linear, dream and nightmare-like structure – consistently aided by the late Tom Rolf’s editing that embraces smash-jump-cuts that always stand out.

Jacob’s Ladder also features a political element over what soldiers went through in Vietnam, and the question of illegal experimental drug testing (named here the ‘ladder’) on US troops – another key part of the story – but this is something the US government has always denied but remains in the unanswerable. In fact, this latter section of the film, where Jacob might finally be getting answers to his madness, made me wonder how much it influenced the likes of The X-Files, with dark corners and secrets from Matt Craven’s Michael, and a mistrust of government.

For the 4K restoration, this check disc confirms it was completed by ROUNDABOUT – USA from the original negative scanned and restored in 4K. Lyne supervised this, and the colour grading, alongside Delphine Roussel and Jean-Pierre Boiget. Where some older films might falter in the special effects, even 35 years later, they were clearly achieved so impressively when it was made that those dark edges and murky, devil worlds look just as sinister as they were envisioned. The streets of NYC are gritty and shadowy, with the Vietnam shots just as brutal and realistic as they should be and, with such a palette of dark and light, you could lose those grainy elements to hyper-digital enhancements yet from the clinking, breeze-blown lights of the subway to the exquisite sharpness of party scene, from the broken clacking wheel of the hospital trolly to its surrounding disorder, this film is full of impressive depth and grimy moods.

Jacob’s Ladder was far more intuitive and imaginative than I expected. Having heard of its eerie, unusual format for some time now, and since I was a kid, this will linger with me. In terms of representation of the mind collapsing and, equally, endeavouring to make sense of itself, it remains an intense and stimulating experience, and a proven cult classic.

Extras

Alongside a 2025 trailer, there’s a new featurette that sits just under 30 minutes, and it’s a pleasing addition. With all the key players involved, we get to hear from writer Bruce Joel Rubin and his incredible inspiration of how it all came to be, and how an incident with taking more LSD than intended, eventually led to moments you’ll see in the film – as well as a whole lot more.

Adrian Lyne talks about the process of the filmmaking (I laughed at his decisive “beat your movie to death to get accidents” judgment), and how he wanted to make something unique, and how the script came to him, even if it had been around for some years before. It’s also fun to hear about his demon-creations, including how they wanted the demons to vibrate, and used camera shots at 4fps with playback at 24fps to create the effect – incidentally something quite commonly in similar genre movies. They also all talk about that blurring of reality, and then there’s also the vital interview and inclusion of Tim Robbins, who delves into his involvement and his affection for it today, it’s great to see him, and then generally conclude on their contentment with its cult status in 2025.

Jacob’s Ladder on 4K UHD is out now*: https://amzn.to/4nW0rtP

*this is an affliate link, but very much my own opinions for this review