ARTNEWSPRESS: A remake of the 1990 head-trip thriller is too scrappy to rival the original’s baroque shock imagery, which is all the movie really had going for it.
Instead, the new version of “Jacob’s Ladder,” directed by David M. Rosenthal, is one of those low-budget, no-atmosphere indie productions that has lurid utilitarian lightning, outdoor scenes that look like they were shot in the back alleys of Toronto (I’m not saying they were — just that they feel that way), and a lurching stop-and-start rhythm. You can forge a decent drama out of elements this scrappy, but not necessarily a film like “Jacob’s Ladder.”
In the new version, when Jacob Singer (Michael Early), a trauma surgeon who works at the Atlanta VA hospital, sees visions that echo the ones in the original film (phantoms on the subway, worms under his wife’s skin, one of those sinister vibrating heads), the visual effects aren’t bad, but they aren’t lavish enough to conjure the momentary tingle of dread that Adrian Lyne did. In the 30 years since “Jacob’s Ladder,” a lot of hallucinatory bat-house imagery has passed under the bridge. A few token, pasted-in fear shots won’t cut it.
But if the new version falls flat as midnight-movie spectacle, it’s at least built around a promising idea of inner hell. Jacob keeps getting hints that his brother, Isaac (Jesse Williams), a casualty of the war in Afghanistan, is actually still alive. Then, in a subway tunnel, he finds him. Jacob, married to the tough but tender Samantha (Nikki Beharie), with an infant son, has the “perfect” life. Whereas Isaac, haunted by his wartime experiences, is falling apart. He appears to be a victim of HDA, an experimental drug approved by the government to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, only the side effects are such that the drug causes more trauma than it cures. We brace ourselves for a rotely “paranoid” anti-government conspiracy movie (which is what the original “Jacob’s Ladder,” beneath its imagery, basically was).
The new version, though, actually wants to be more of a head trip. It’s not just that Jacob keeps seeing things; it’s that his entire life may be an illusion — a dream he sheds as the movie goes on. At a certain point, “Jacob’s Ladder” starts to feel more like a cut-rate version of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” a tale in which the ultimate nightmare is waking up inside a new identity. Michael Ealy acts this out with an existential fear that’s vivid and convincing. Yet even here, the essential scrappiness of the film remains. The new “Jacob’s Ladder” plays like a half-hearted sketch of the movie it could have been. Given that, I’d say that it might actually not be a bad idea to remake “Jacob’s Ladder” again, only this time with a genuine update of the creepy-freaky imagery, as well as a story that, at last, does it justice.
Reviewed online, Aug. 21, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 89 MIN.
Production: A Vertical Entertainment release of an LD Entertainment, Gaeta/Rosenzweig Films, Will Packer Productions production. Producers: Will Packer, Mickey Liddell, Michael Gaeta, Alison Rosenzweig, Pete Shilaimon, Jennifer Monroe. Executive producers: Alison Semenza King, Scott Holroyd, Alice Neuhauser, James Lopez, Michael Ealy.
Crew: Director: David M. Rosenthal. Screenplay: Jeff Buhler, Sarah Thorpe. Camera (color, widescreen): Pedro Luque. Editor: Richard Mettler. Music: Atli Örvarsson.
With: Michael Ealy, Jesse Williams, Nikki Beharie, Guy Burnet, Joseph Sikora, Karla Souza, Ritchie Coster, Jon Eyez.
https://variety.com
OWEN GLEIBERMAN
