Jacob’s Ladder at 35: A war-horror hybrid that holds up

It’s been 35 years since the release of Jacob’s Ladder, an unusual hybrid of war drama and horror film, which adds another layer of time’s passage onto a film that blurs eras. Released on Nov. 2, 1990, Jacob’s Ladder (which screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin had been toying with for a full decade) fell somewhere between a combat story (like Platoon) and a post-war veteran story (like Coming Home or In Country); a purgatorial space that would prove thematically fitting, and key to its long-term success.