Writer Bruce Joel Rubin has a supernaturally tinged CV, including Ghost, Brainstorm and Deadly Friend, but his most influential screenplay is the psychological horror that took almost a decade to get into production. Jacob's Ladder's legacy reaches far and wide, from the Silent Hill game and film franchise to American Horror Story and The Sixth Sense. Typical, then, that it's a reputation mainly built on a cult following after an underwhelming release in 1990. Perhaps this new 4K restoration, supervised by director Adrian Lyne, will give Tim Robbins' tour through hell a new lease of life.

In 1971, Jacob Singer (Robbins) and his squad come under attack in Vietnam, with many of them exhibiting strange head pain and convulsions. Escaping into the jungle, he's impaled by the bayonet of an unseen assailant. Four years later, a nearly fatal experience on the New York City Subway is just the start of the strange events and demonic creatures he starts seeing around the city. While he keeps his spirit up in his postal job and attends parties with his girlfriend Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña), he constantly thinks back to his previous marriage and the son who died in an accident before he was dispatched to Vietnam (Macaulay Culkin).

When his doctor and one of his old comrades apparently die in separate car explosions, the squad rebands to seek action against the US Military for whatever they were subjected to in Vietnam. But as forces increasingly seem to block him, can Singer ever learn the truth?

Thirty-five years on, many will be familiar with the clash of realities that runs through Jacob's Ladder. But as with any mix of unreal present and apparently indecipherable flashbacks, the fun, or rather, psychological terror, is in the journey.

Tim Robbins is well cast as the veteran Jacob Singer: slightly nerdy but decisive, and keeping his sense of humour throughout much of the film. It's crucial that Singer makes a go of it in 1975, laughing on the streets and brushing off jokes about him being dead from a palm reader. As the fever dream deepens, he could be any lost pilgrim looking for answers, going back to Dante—so no surprise that before it took the name of the Old Testament story about a connection between Heaven and Hell that's worked into the plot, it was called Dante's Inferno.

While the inspiration may be in antiquity, Jacob's Ladder's themes feel very much of their time. It was four years after Hellraiser brought demons to some and angels to others to Earth, and there are some shades of Twin Peaks, which premiered seven months before Jacob's Ladder's release. There must have been something in the water in the late 1980s—although definitely not the BZ drug (banned by the US Military in 1969) mentioned at the end for a haunting final reality check. But Jacob's Ladder is unlucky not to have fared as well as similar properties, as it is an immersive, puzzling film that gets a lot right.

New York is the perfect backdrop to both obscure and exaggerate Singer's condition—as Jezzie says, “New York is filled with creatures.” Lyne, who supposedly softened the heavy dose of Old Testament in the script, ensures there's a subtlety to Singer's terror ride. The main horror comes from the Vietnam ‘flashbacks' while the shadows creep into Singer's New York life. Disconcerting sketches break up his day-to-day life, like his joking chiropractor or being forced into an ice bath by his neighbours after a panicked collapse. It all amounts to a slow torture that, even worse, gives him the room to investigate, only to encounter further disappointment and ever more questions. The demons appear in hints—protruding bones, creepers, twisted faces, with impressive special effects to ram them home. Perhaps the most disconcerting effect is the head shake seen in many later films, series, and games that blur reality, including frequent use in Silent Hill and The Matrix.

For all Jacob's Ladder feels like a walk through Hell to a special place in the underworld, it's not just a miserable one-way ticket. There's a suggestion of peace and hope at the film's end—a final scene that hangs in the mind and makes this well worth a reappraisal.

Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD Special Features