richspenc
DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ 。 ANY SPOILERS"Jacob's ladder" is very powerful, intriguing, and dramatic. It really makes you think. Jacob is in Vietnam sitting at his camp.with rest of his platoon just shooting the s***. Suddenly the camp is seemingly invaded by enemy platoon. Everyone flips out all crazy like I never even seen before, one guy seizuring out on his back, several guys with limbs graphicly severed off. Jacob runs off into the jungle and is brutully.stabbed by what seemingly then was an enemy soldier. This is where the very eerie, ullusionary visions and hallucinations begin on screen for the audience. Seemingly, we are then flash forwarded in time to after the war where Jacob is no longer with his wife and kids as he was before the war. He's living with a girl from his post office job, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pina). He keeps getting flashbacks (frightening ones) from the war, and (pleasant ones) from his marriage and his kids including his deceased son Mackuely Culkan, who was run over by a truck while on his bike right before going to Vietnam. He starts getting very weird, spooky visions of demons, the devil, monsters, and speedy shaky heads. It was freaky. He had a real friend though in his chiropracter, Danny Ialo who was very understanding through his experiences. Jacob learned about "the ladder", an unusually intense hallucinary weed he and his platoon smoked in Vietnam, and he believed what was happening was he was still.suffering long term effects from it even years later. SPOILERS Things, we find out, can turn out to be nothing like they seem. Here is my analysis of the picture for those who have seen the film all the way through. Jacob never survived past Vietnam. First, it turned out that Jacob was stabbed by a member of his own platoon, and there was no enemy troup, they all psyched out on each other due the unusual weed's effect. When Jacob got stabbed in the jungle, he died slowly, and painfully, with serious emotional, mental, and physical pain. Everything we see after the start of the movie when he gets stabbed in all products of Jacob's awareness. It is a combination of his past memories (his past marriage and being with his sons including the deceased one), his "what could've happened" future if he made the wrong choices (everything with life with Jezzie, , his seeing his old friends and lawyer about what Vietnam did to them, and seeing the chemical scientist about "the ladder" experiment), his "what could've happened" future if he made the right choices (being back with his wife and 2 surviving sons, such as the hospital bed scene right before hearing the spooky "dream on" voice), and Jacob's nightmares and fears (the "dream on" voice, the spooky staring woman and creature under the blanket on the subway, all the demons, creatures, and fast shaking heads shown throughout the film, the almost getting run over, almost getting blown up, the freaky ride through the weird gruesome images on the hospital guerny, the back room with the man who tells him he's dead and then drills into his head (which is where it's revealed that Jezzie was on the devil's side, why else was she with them there)). Every bit of all of these experiences were all mixed together in one big pot of stew, which were in the moments between Jacob getting stabbed and him finally passing away, when he reunites with his deceased son at the foot of the stairs and ascends with him up to heaven. I believe in the afterlife. I believe that everything that happened in this film is the picture of Danny Ialo explaining "When you are scared of dying, and you are holding on, you will see demons tearing your life away, but once you have made your peace, the demons are really angels freeing you from the earth". I love that, and it is very true. That was Jacob's journey from his life to the afterlife. Danny was in a sense his guardian angel. It is sad how there are a few people wanting to now say this movie now works on the "no afterlife" thinking and everything in the movie was all in Jacob's head before fading into nothingness. I've seen the program where the directors and producers are talking about the making of the film, they were all saying that Jacob going to heaven were their implications and intentions while creating the story. Danny's philosophy no longer makes so much sense with that no afterlife thinking, angels do not free you from the earth and into nothingness. Some people, such as a few of these reviewers, want to now twist already made ideas into their own terms to fit their own skeptical beliefs. This new no afterlife thinking today is a product of the new skeptical, distrusting, superficial, spiritless society forming in 2010s America.
tiskec
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.
John Brooks
This is the ultimate film when it comes to a very specific style of cinema-thinking, a very definite and expansive use of cinema altogether in what it is and means to achieve. I'll write this review with no Spoiler at all, so I must be conservative with my commenting. This film is a scifi-ish, mystery-drama with tinges of horror. It explores the life of a Vietnam ex-solider who returns to mainstream life after suffering a particularly traumatic experience and attempts to put the pieces back together to understand why he is in such a state years later. The film explores human psychology through strong imagery, and cinematic expression, in ways that are all of frightening and vivid, subtle and emotional, and very intellectually stimulating. The story is perfectly constructed, the acting solid throughout, and it sets up the main character in exactly the right environment of a double life so that he and the viewer may discover and unravel the truth about it all bit by bit as the suspense grows and the anticipation for something huge to drop at the end rings with eagerness. And the ending is so, so dearly worth your time. One of the very top films I've ever watched; it is total-cinema, touching on all genres at once, and taking advantage of all available strengths. Supreme cinema.
