Jacob’s Ladder (1990) Explained

Jacob’s Ladder is the definition of a ‘cult classic’ horror movie. Little known outside its fanbase, its influence far outstretches its modest commercial success. Written by Bruce Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact) and directed by Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal), the film follows Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) as his life begins to unravel before his eyes. Old acquaintances start dying, people seem to be following him, and horrendous visions haunt him at every turn. Reality and nightmare quickly become indistinguishable, with the film’s narrative shattering into hallucinatory fragments before delivering its final, haunting revelation.

If you haven’t seen the movie, stop right now and watch it before reading on. For all its plot twists, it’s the raw experience of Jacob’s Ladder that gives the film its power. It is so effective at unnerving audiences that roughly twenty minutes of the film had to be cut from the original theatrical release, after test screenings reported audiences finding the full experience too intense. Modern viewers owe it to themselves to see the uncut version, as these scenes go a long way to clearing up some of the movie’s more confusing elements.

Spoilers for the director cut to follow.

1. Is Jacob’s entire dying hallucination caused by a combat drug?

Probably, though we can never be completely certain about the circumstances surrounding Jacob’s death. Only his ‘flashbacks’ to Vietnam and the final scene are real; beyond this, we have no solid information. Whilst the seizures the soldiers have before the attack, and the film’s final message about the ‘BZ’ drug used in Vietnam heavily imply that Jacob himself was dosed, we never actually see him suffering side effects before he is stabbed. Moreover, everything we learn about the drug comes from the character of Michael Newman (Matt Craven). The problem is that Newman is just another figment of Jacob’s imagination. During a brief moment of lucidity, we see Newman – or rather, the man Jacob thinks of as Newman – in the medevac helicopter next to Jacob, meaning it’s very likely that his subconscious just wove the man into his story. As a lowly grunt, there’s no way Jacob would have known about the drug’s development, so there’s no telling whether Newman’s story is definitively true or not.

2. Can deleted scenes help us make sense of the hallucination?

The question of whether Jacob’s vision was caused by the drug is missing the point. What’s important about ‘the ladder’, as Newman calls it, is how it is used to misdirect the audience within the context of Jacob’s dying dream. Jacob’s Ladder is the film’s red herring, offering a plausible explanation for Jacob’s hallucinations and underpinning the idea that the moments we see in Vietnam are occurring in the past rather than the present. In this way the drug explanation serves as a lifeline for the audience and Jacob himself, presenting a ‘get out of jail free’ card that ultimately proves false.

Two scenes cut from the theatrical release underscore this. In the first, Newman takes Jacob to a hotel and attempts to cure him of his hallucinations with an antidote. After a particularly nightmarish vision, Jacob is apparently freed from the demons. In the subsequent scene, however, he is buying a train ticket at Grand Central Station. Feeling watched, he ducks into a toilet stall. In the next cubicle over, someone pushes out a wad of toilet roll from a hole in the dividing wall, and tells Jacob to ‘dream on’; the same voice he heard earlier whilst lying in hospital. These two scenes are so important because they show Jacob being offered potential salvation, only for the façade to be ripped away. Without the explanation that the demons are being caused by the ladder drug, Jacob finally has to confront the fact that he is dying. In this sense, whether he has been hallucinating because of a narcotic or simply because he is dying (or both) doesn’t matter. Whatever the cause, Jacob’s mind has been trying to construct an alternate reality, and an explanation for that reality’s breakdown, through which he might escape the fact of his imminent end.

3. Who is Louis really?

Jacob’s girlfriend Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña) and his chiropractor Louis (Danny Aiello) may seem like anomalies in the film. Unlike Jacob’s ex-wife, his children and old comrades, it’s not completely clear what relation Jacob had to these individuals in real life, if any.

Louise is the easier to explain of the two, and most people will probably guess his role on the first viewing. Whether Louise actually exists outside Jacob’s head is an open question, and doesn’t really matter. What’s more significant is his purpose. Louise is Jacob’s guiding angel; in this, his role as a chiropractor is not arbitrary. Though his treatments are uncomfortable, Louise eases the body’s pain, a fact that’s especially important considering his statement that devils and angels are both just beings trying to help the dying let go. Louise appears angelic to Jacob because Jacob accepts the discomfort of Louise’s help rather than trying to put off the pain and deny it. In this sense, Louise is the part of Jacob that knows he is dying, and is trying to help the rest of him accept it as well.

4. Who is Jezzie?

This leads directly to Jezzie. She is the lynchpin of the alternate reality Jacob’s mind has constructed for itself. A comment Jacob makes to his ex-wife tells us that the real Jezzie was simply an old work colleague of Jacob’s, who he probably had idle sexual fantasies about. But in his world, Jezzie is the most direct manifestation of Jacob’s subconscious desire to live. Her obvious sex appeal is the urge for life in its purest form; eros in the face of thanatos, a link the film overtly makes during the party scene, where Jacob hallucinates her having intercourse with a demon. More than that, she represents a life that could have been, a possibility that will now – like all other possibilities – never be fulfilled. Because of this, she is frequently shown around the demons and even as one herself, most explicitly in a cut ending scene.

As a demon/ angel, even at the center of Jacob’s imagined life she shows that this reality can give him no comfort; that if he clings on until the bitter end, he’ll watch it torn away from him. The film hints at her nature in an early scene, where she throws pictures of his dead son into an incinerator, literally burning away his painful memories. Again, she is another actor helping Jacob let go.

5. What is the purpose?

Jacob’s Ladder is a masterpiece of horror not only because of its atmosphere and unique artistic direction. It’s a masterpiece because like all good horror it tells us something about the human condition. It’s a psychological thriller and an antiwar film, but at its heart, it’s an intensely personal look at one man’s fear and eventual acceptance of a path we must all travel some day.