Personally, I’m split on the success of Jacob’s Ladder. The structure of the film hinges on an interesting final scene that frames the story as one long flashback or flash-forward. It works just as well either way and created the shorthand of a “Jacob’s Ladder Scenario,” which gives the film a little immortality. However, the idea that a solution is coming arrives with a character who announces, “I know what’s happening to you,” but runs away before answering the question, and later on, once he gives out what little information the script wants to string the audience along with, he is mysteriously killed.
Yet the film clearly works because it’s a parade of loud, flashy, Gothic nightmare sequences. Coming off the success of Fatal Attraction, Adrian Lyne tackled a famously unfilmable script by Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) and pumped up the visual and audio style to create basically an evolved cinematic language for Horror that future filmmakers would feed off for years to come.
Leave A Comment