My favorite movies are the ones I can't forget. Jacob's Ladder is such a movie. Disturbing on many levels, it engages all the senses and provokes our thinking in a way that few horror movies can. With Tim Robbins delivering an unparalleled performance, Jacob's Ladder is a brilliantly intriguing and bewildering movie.

It starts out with rookie troops in Vietnam who get attacked, setting the stage for a later time when a disturbed veteran reenters society as a postal worker in New York. Jacob Singer (Robbins) suffers from flashbacks and vivid hallucinations of Vietnam, and he starts to wonder what exactly happened to him when he was there. This leads him to explore the possibility of him and his Vietnam buddies having been used as guinea pigs for the government’s new aggression inducing drug. This is just one thread out of the many this multi-layered narrative this movie holds.

We are furthermore introduced to Jacob’s girlfriend Jezzie, who is just about at the end of her tether with his odd and tormented behavior. He once had a wife and children including a son called Gabe (Macaulay Culkin) who was killed in a tragic accident. The plot’s lynchpin is Jacob’s chiropractor Louis, a good friend giving him moral guidance in their esoteric conversations. The movie is often quite confusing, leaving the viewer puzzled as to what’s real and what’s hallucination. This perfectly ties in with the movie’s premise, about hallucinogens given to soldiers at war.

There’s so much more to this movie’s story than simply giving acid to soldiers. Jacob’s Ladder is one of those movies that can be watched over and over again without getting boring as you uncover more and more intricate details. Rather than going for gore (with the notable exception of one particularly gruesome hospital scene) and in your face scares, the movie attacks with quick flashes of weirdness, often going by so fast that you're left wondering -- much like Jacob -- what you just saw, or if you even saw something at all. Tim Robbins handles his part impressively, keeping a tight reign on Jacob's confused state without going overboard or becoming unintentionally comedic.

Director Adrian Lyne had a record of hit movies (Fatal Attraction, 9½ Weeks), and seemed an off choice for this subtle tale of spiritual horror. The movie became a cult hit, but it’s success was nowhere near the scale of some of his previous works. It shouldn't be overlooked though, as it really is something special. The world Jacob lives in is constantly shifting, leaving him (and the viewer) confused and scared. The brief glimpses of demonic faces seem to come from beyond the living. In the brilliant and memorable party scene, his girlfriend looks as if she’s sexually assaulted by an invisible entity, causing one of Jacob's seizures.

The plot may be playing the wake-up card once or twice too often, but once you work out what’s going on you retrospectively feel that this was probably necessary. Many times it is shown, in no uncertain terms, the state Jacob’s in, but there are a number of other points to be taken in as well, leaving Jacob and the viewer in disorientation. When members of his former Vietnam army unit become involved, the film turns into a conspiracy thriller, with military experimentation assuming center stage. After all this, the conclusion nicely ties up all subplots and story threads and works not so much as a twist but rather as a confirmation.

Jacob's Ladder may be a horror film genre-wise, but it’s an odd one. It's one of those rare chillers that seek to reassure the viewer. Robbins' perfect acting performance holds the complicated story nicely together, and the movie leaves you curiously at peace with its philosophical ending. A unique and intriguing viewing experience, Jacob’s Ladder is firmly recommended.