Mark Reviews Movies: JACOB'S LADDER (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 22, 2019

If you've seen Jacob's Ladder, it's almost a certainty that you remember the film's final, devastating revelation. If only for that ending alone, the idea of remaking Adrian Lyne's haunting, mind-bending examination of trauma seems like an act of folly.

Because the ending is so noteworthy and memorable, there are two potential ways to approach a new version of the 1990 film: Either replicate that finale and, as a result, the broad steps the story takes to get there, or try to invent a new ending, working the material to that end. This is, unfortunately, one of those damned-if-you-do-or-don't situations. The first option likely would result in a pointless rehash, culminating in an anticlimax of the inevitable. As for the second option, one would have to come up with something close to a twist to end all twists to even attempt to match the impact of the original film's capper.

To their credit, screenwriters Jeff Buhler and Sarah Thorpe do try something different with this version of Jacob's Ladder. It feels more in-the-moment than its antecedent, which took place in the years following the war in Vietnam and more than a decade before the year of that film's release. This one, though, is happening now, as veterans returning from at least one conflict still ongoing in the Middle East discover that the pain and guilt of their combat experiences might literally be killing them.

For all of its stylistic shortcomings, this version possesses an undeniable sense of urgency in its revamped plot. This is now. There are soldiers returning from combat with psychological issues they don't fully understand. There's a system that's supposed to be helping, but help isn't coming. It might be because of an inability to keep up with those affected or an unwillingness to do anything, but the underlying reason doesn't really matter. The consequences remain the same.

That's the world of this new version, which follows Jacob Singer (Michael Ealy), who served as a medic during the war and now works as a doctor at a VA hospital in Atlanta, as he discovers that fellow veterans are suddenly and violently becoming physically and mentally ill. Jacob's own trauma revolves around the death of his brother, a soldier who, critically wounded in combat, was brought into the medical unit where Jacob was stationed overseas. As far as Jacob knows, his brother died while being transported to a base in Germany.

All of that guilt is compounded by the fact that Jacob's wife Samantha (Nicole Beherie) was dating the brother when they met, and all of this melodrama, related in sporadic flashbacks, is important, because Isaac (Jesse Williams), the brother, isn't actually dead. Jacob finds him among other traumatized veterans, living in abandoned subway tunnels. Like other vets who recently have shown signs of psychosis, Isaac is taking an experimental drug called "the Ladder," which is supposed to alleviate symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Obviously, much has changed from the original film in this new iteration, although—beyond the readjustment of the role of the experimental drug (In the original, it was given to soldiers before going into combat), the modern-day setting, and the ways in which these two things relate to relevant concerns about the treatment of veterans—the adjustments to the plot are mostly superficial. Ealy and Williams play this almost soap-opera-ish plot (A fight even breaks out at Jacob and Samantha's wedding) with sincerity, and Ealy sells Jacob's deteriorating mental state and increasing desperation well enough.

Meanwhile, though, the core of story's methods remain the same, as Jacob tries to uncover the mystery of the drug while himself having strange hallucinations of eerie figures along the way (In retrospect, this ends up giving away much more about the conclusion than one might expect, although anyone with knowledge of the original might not notice, since the visions are so central to the story). Those scenes are less a nightmarish representation of a troubled psyche and more the stuff of any generic horror movie.

Jittery figures and shadows jump into frame to give Jacob—and, in theory, us—a fright. From its first scene, in which a homeless veteran believes he's being attacked but is actually having a deadly seizure, director David M. Rosenthal and cinematographer Pedro Luque give the movie a look of sleek grime. It gets the job done for establishing the mood and preparing us for the assorted jump scares, but this more polished look lacks the unnatural, otherworldly punch of the original.

The whole movie lacks almost all of the original's punch, but that can't be held too much against it. Jacob's Ladder is trying something different, which is to be commended when so many remakes simply go through the motions of their forebears. As for the ending, well, it's definitely not the one from the original, although it certainly makes us re-think everything that has come before it. More than likely, though, we're thinking about how this new twist makes no sense.

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