Manages to deliver nightmarish imagery, psychological torment, and a gripping relationship drama all wrapped up in a frightening and mysterious package.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2023

This is gibberish. [Full review in Spanish]

| Dec 1, 2022

It is just one of those films that will get under your skin and stay with you. In 31 years, it hasn't aged a day.

| Oct 25, 2021

It's just as haunting as I remember.

| Oct 27, 2020

Jacob's Ladder wrestles with our fear of death, the power of our dreams, and the presence of angels (or are they demons?) in our lives.

| Apr 9, 2020

It is this constant slippage into uncertainty that makes Jacob's Ladder unique. Lyne's focus on the sensual experiences of his character helps blur that line between dream and reality...

| Aug 23, 2019

Though [Lyne] arguably focuses more on the thriller elements than the existential ones, he still manages a seductive, nightmare-like quality.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 23, 2019

'90s drama about Vietnam vet has language, violence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 6, 2019

It's weird and surreal, but it ends with most of the holes plugged and all but a few of the loose ends tied into a tidy package. Some argue this is a cheat and the film should have been more open ended. That's a personal choice; I like it the way it is.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 23, 2014

For hours and days after you've seen it, you'll still be putting it together in your head. While all of it is gripping, it doesn't come together until the final scene, which is jolting, transcendent, unexpected yet inevitable.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 23, 2014

As long as the movie refuses to commit itself, it is a truly creepy, nerve-jangling experience.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 23, 2014

In the best puzzle movies, the pieces fit -- eventually. But if you try to piece together Jacob's Ladder, all you get for your trouble is more pieces.

| Aug 23, 2014

Jacob's Ladder is unique. Rarely is such an unconventional screenplay given this full-blown, $25 million studio treatment. It is a curiosity -- a mutant of a movie in an industry that specializes in clones.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 23, 2014

Without a strongly sympathetic figure at the center of the movie, Jacob's plight seems very remote. Watching this film should feel like being caught in a nightmare, but it feels more like watching someone else who is caught in a nightmare.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 23, 2014

One of Robbins' finest unheralded performances, plus a slew of supporting roles from then-unknowns Eriq LaSalle, Ving Rhames, Jason Alexander, Pruitt Taylor Vince, and an uncredited Macaulay Culkin.

| Aug 23, 2014

[Robbins' and Pena's] scenes together are the highlight of the film, so natural, so bright. That's why we're willing to invest a lot of time in what turns out to be a terribly overwrought plot.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 23, 2014

There's a word for a movie that dresses up the usual cheap tricks with real human suffering and a bogus patina of truth: offensive.

Full Review | Aug 23, 2014

Every story needs some kernel of internal logic, some hold on reality. But Lyne's film is like trying to scale a mountain of Jello. There's no solid ground. Everything is constantly shifting and undulating.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 23, 2014

Just when it's on the brink of becoming one of the most disturbing, disorienting and penetrating psychological horror movies, Jacob's Ladder -- in a self-deflating few minutes -- turns itself into a shaggy-dog story.

| Aug 23, 2014

A friend, after seeing Jacob's Ladder, griped, "I wasn't afraid of dying -- until I saw this movie." Put that blurb in an ad and see who shows up at the multiplexes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 23, 2014