It’s wild to think that screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin had not one but two supernatural stories hit multiplexes in 1990. One of them, the romantic tearjerker Ghost, became a box-office success that won him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. But we’re here to talk about the other one: Jacob’s Ladder, the Adrian Lyne-directed war movie/paranoid thriller/psycho-horror mash-up that baffled critics and audiences. Tim Robbins spends two hours going through it as a tormented postal-working Vietnam vet named Jacob “Professor” Singer, hallucinating like crazy in scuzzed-up 1970s New York. When he’s not being hunted by demons and grieving over his dead son (an uncredited pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin), he’s also wondering if he’s dead, alive or locked up in a loony bin somewhere. Yes, it’s one of those tonally/visually erratic mindfucks where you’re always stuck in is-this-shit-actually-happening mode. But it’s also become an influential cult fave, inspiring everything from the entire Silent Hill media franchise to the nightmarishly abstract moments from Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Catch the 4K restoration at the Belcourt this week. Visit belcourt.org for showtimes.
Dec. 4 & 7 at the Belcourt
2102 Belcourt Ave.
