Jacob's Ladder

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Jacob Singer isn't sure what's real anymore.

The nightmares he keeps having are tearing his life apart, one day at a time. They might be after-effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from his term of military service in Vietnam. They might be the side-effects from a secret and illegal drug trial that he and his platoon were unknowingly exposed to. Or they may be a result of his own mind slipping into insanity from the trauma of his young son's death.

But there is one possibility that terrifies him, even though day by day it seems more and more likely. The demons and monsters he keeps seeing- out of the corner of his eye, hiding in the shadows, lurking in his darkest nightmares- might be real. And if they are, then they're coming for him - and there's nothing he can do about it...

Jacob's Ladder (1990) is a psychological Thriller / Horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin. It stars Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Pena, Danny Aiello, and Jason Alexander. Actor Macaulay Culkin appears briefly in an uncredited performance.

This movie was one of the primary inspirations for the Silent Hill franchise of games.

Tropes used in Jacob's Ladder include:

• Angel Unaware: Jacob's chiropractor Louie is implied to be an angel trying to save him.
• Abandoned Hospital: Many of the creepier hospital scenes take place in one of these.
• Bad Santa: Played straight and Played for Laughs, at the same time.
• Bittersweet Ending: Jacob has been Dead All Along, but, after finally accepting his death, he is able to ascend to Heaven with his son.
• Broken Masquerade: The Artificial Realm variant.
• Dark World: Jacob keeps slipping back and forth between his everyday life and a darker realm inhabited by demons.
• Dead to Begin With
• Dying Dream: At the end, Jacob discovers that he never made it out of Vietnam.
• Evil Is Visceral: During the hospital gurney scene, many organs are shown laying on the floor, some of which get run over by the gurney.
• Eyeless Face: Many of the creatures haunting Jacob have no eyes.
• Fan Disservice: Elizabeth Pena, dancing suggestively while sweating? Hot. Elizabeth Pena dancing suggestively while sweating whilist being being molested by some sort of demon? Not so much.
• Flash Forward: Jacob projects himself into the early 80's, while dying in Vietnam in the early 70's.
  • When you think about it, nothing in "1982" is anything Jacob wouldn't have known about in the early 70's.
• Hospital Gurney Scene: It gets worse.
• Ironic Hell: One of several explanations for what the hell is going on in this movie.
• It Always Rains At Funerals
• Mind Screw: The whole thing, really.
• Ms. Fanservice: Jezzie, who spends a lot of time topless.
  • Jacob, who spends even more time shirtless, might count too.
• Nothing Is Scarier: See Sinister Subway, below.
• Shout-Out: The artist Francis Bacon, whom the Surreal Horror is based on.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran : This is what Jacob is implied to be at first.
• Shirtless Scene: Jacob has a lot of them.
• Sinister Subway: An early scene has Jacob getting lost in a New York subway station. He doesn't encounter anything overly supernatural there, but it's almost unbearably dark and creepy all the same.
  • Nothing except for demons with glowing eyes staring out of a train.
    • ...The train that almost kills him.
• Stairway to Heaven: In the end of the film Jacob is seen walking up stairs into a bright white light with his dead son, we can only assume after he accepts that he's dead he's going to Heaven.
• Surreal Horror
• Through the Eyes of Madness
• Tomato in the Mirror
• Under Crank: Used on all the demons. This film pioneered the use of this effect in horror movies.
• What Could Have Been: According to director Adrian Lyne, the original screenplay contained a much more traditional, Bosch-esque depiction of hell. However, Lyne thought audiences would find such imagery silly.