i saw this movie recently and those 1h 40 min or so just flew by, i cant remember last time a movie kept me glued to the sofa like that.are there any other movies with similar themes to it or something like that?
shareI feel like "What dreams may come" should keep you glued to your seat. It has the similar good vs. evil life & death theme.
sharewow. not one person mentioned Flatliners...
sure its not the same story wise... but the themes, the vibe and the tone are almost spot on with this movie.
Have to agree with this, and also with the person who posted What Dreams May Come. Both movies while not the same story wise have the same theme as Jacob's Ladder and are both guaranteed to keep you watching. Flatliners has always been a favorite of mine, makes you wonder if any med students have actually tried it!
shareInsidious
Twilight Zone "The Pool Guy" and "Night Route" (2002 version of the series in Night Route one of the characters actually mentions Jacob's Ladder)
Identity
Source Code
The Butterfly Effect
The Number 23
Dream House
The Others
The Other (1972)
Stay
Already been said, but my votes go to 'Dead Man' and 'Angel Heart'. Especially the latter.
And 'The Machinist' actually, another good suggestion. Especially in the persecution aspect.
These bastards!
I see a lot of recommendations for movies that are similar plot-wise but don't necessarily have the same "essence" that this film does.
I HIGHLY recommend, to the OP (if they're even still reading this) and everyone else the movie Possession, made in 1981 by Polish director Andrzej Zulawski, who's made other movies I'd recommend for a similar vibe as well (I'm thinking of The Devil and The Third Part of the Night, especially the latter, about Poland during WWII, and a descent into a hellish psychological madness, ending scenes very much feel like something that wouldn't be out of place here or a Silent Hill game for that matter). The story is more "straightforward" in that it is linear, otherwise it is sheer feverish madness and takes quite a dedicated viewer to follow it let alone make sense of any of it. Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani play a couple in a state of marital discord, and you witness less acting and more the actors losing their heads and the director filming them as it happens. It has a disturbing and unforgettable subway scene of its own but of an entirely different nature. It partly involves Sam Neill as a government spy, which all goes to hell toward the end, and Adjani's mysterious extramarital affair with some demonic entity that grows more and more human(like) with every person she lures in and kills (a plot element that Hellraiser lifted quite liberally for itself). The camera is as frantic as the characters, always moving and peering around corners and through the shadows, and caps off with a bizarre ending involving loud sirens hinting at something apocalyptic. The director apparently made this while going through a messy divorce himself, I can't imagine what kind of relationship he had that would have inspired THAT.
Lynch has been mentioned, definitely a no-brainer choice there, Eraserhead, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and perhaps his magnum opus Inland Empire for fragmented psychological and bordering on demonic terror.
Has anyone mentioned Cronenberg yet? Another no-brainer. Movies like Videodrome, Naked Lunch and to a lesser extent Spider all have the same kind of hellish hallucinatory vibe, blending of reality and unreality, landscapes of grime and decay.
Barton Fink is a good one, the Coens wouldn't make a movie so finely balancing comedy and terror-inducing anxiety until A Serious Man. Some strange, ambiguous imagery in this one, the burning building in the end being a stand-out.
Combat Shock - a Troma movie, so one might dismiss as cheap, campy exploitation fare. And while it is definitely, er, budgeted, and the acting not very good, and a scene involving someone apparently OD'ing on heroin via jabbing a sharp metal bit in their vein and pushing the powder into it (which is impossible and yet still very uncomfortable to watch) which looks ridiculous it's still a hell of a film. Wears its Taxi Driver-meets-Eraserhead influence on its sleeve but manages to be an effective and highly disturbing and bleak movie all the same, grime you practically feel on your skin and some nasty Nam flashback scenes of its own.
Also check out Kiyoshi Kurosawa, one of today's greatest modern directors by far, Cure is one to check out, a director who's done some of the best supernatural movies of today but there's no elements of that to be found here, at least not on the surface. Fans of JL and particularly the movie Seven should like it, though this one is much slower-paced, mysterious and hangs on to a constant level of tension that never lets up and never allows release. It's a plot involving a detective investigating a serial killer who uses hypnosis on others who carry out killings of their own but that's a massive oversimplification. Just see it.
Haven't watched the movie yet but Last Year at Marienbad, a movie said to explore the subjective and fragmentary nature of memory and the shadows the lurk around it sounds like one to watch. I've read comparisons to and being an influence on The Shining in its use of tracking shots around an immense estate with some unsettling and strange scenes (the famous shot being the courtyard with the people walking through casting long shadows and the trees casting none at all).
Allow me to chime in... a lot of people have put a lot of good ones forward. Here are ones I haven't seen mentioned yet... I will give the movie a 1-5 in terms of how close it is to Jacob's Ladder 1 being very remotely like Jacob's Ladder connected mostly by one or two major elements, and 5 being right in the same ballpark and VERY similar.
Session 9 (WATCH THIS... very similar tone, plot, style, themes, acting, locales, horror, supernatural undertones, unreliable mental states of the main characters...) 5
Cube (much more sci fi than supernatural life/death heaven/hell. still some similarities in tone and facing doom in a strange new reality) 1
Beyond the Black Rainbow (not as big of a fan of this one. More sci fi than supernatural but more similar than Cube. some great visuals) 2
Triangle (very underrated. sci fi again but also horror therefore a bit closer. flawed but still amazing and also some life and death themes) 3
Ink (very low budget movie. some flaws but overall mostly good. supernatural just not horror) 4
The Cell (incredible visuals. like CRAZY incredible visuals. not the best movie overall IMHO but worth watching for the cerebral and visual angled similarities) 3
The Passersby (another Twilight Zone episode like Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. pretty close thematically and story-wise) 3
Constantine (the action movie version of jacob's ladder in many ways. definitely supernatural and dealing with life and death with creepy visuals. the big difference is that there is not much mystery to this one or the psychological angle. it plays its hand pretty straight forward. also has Pruitt Taylor Vince in it!) 3
Identity (Probably the most different. But it is still similar in its presentation and cerebral nature of the plot; ALSO... Pruitt Taylor Vince AGAIN!!!!) 1
Coraline (I'm not kidding. Coraline is an amazing movie very much like these despite being a "kids" movie. Very much similar to this just not necessarily demons or life and death) 4
Eden Log (grossly underrated. very low budget movie. right in the family of these movies for sure but still more sci fi than supernatural) 2
Silent Hill (not sure if previously listed... but this is pretty darn close in almost every way. it is just not QUITE as good due to acting and the script but the cinematography, effects, concepts, themes, locales, are all VERY similar. it is important to note that the video games the movie was based on were actually INSPIRED by Jacob's Ladder so you are in for a similar experience here...) 5
Cheers. And good list everyone!