Customer Reviews

Soul Survivors/Jacob's Ladder

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i really thought i was getting a deal when i bought ANY movie with jacob's ladder. boy, was i ever wrong. first off, jacob's ladder is one of my favorite movies. i've been watching this movie since i was a little girl, back when the highlight of the film was mooning over my crush, macauley culkin. i remember many late nights at slumber parties after playing "light as a feather, stiff as a board" spent watching this movie.

ahhh, memories...

anyway, let's crack the whip and tear into "soul survivors." this movie is a steaming tUrd (notice that i spell that with a capital U because it looks like a toilet bowl, and that's where this movie belongs.)

alright, so now i sound like the crazy one, but trust me, you'll be tearing your eyes out in mourning over the downward trajectory that cinema has taken in recent years. this movie embodies all of the worst things about movies today - painfully terrible dialogue (the kind where you'd feel bad for the actor, but they're just as bad), stupefyingly vapid delivery (here's lookin' at you, eliza dushku), plot holes bigger than my ever-expanding backside (and that's sayin' something), less atmosphere and tone than a mcdonald's in montana, etc, etc, ad infinitum.

save yourself the embarrassment of having this stinker on your dvd rack - buy jacob's ladder by itself and try your hardest to forget that you ever heard of soul survivors.

JACOB'S LADDER (1990) has the exact plot device that's used in CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962), THE SIXTH SENSE (1999), DONNIE DARKO (2001) and perhaps other films:

Within a few minutes of the beginning, something definitive happens to the main character that absolutely dictates the story's conclusion. All that comes between these points is either explanatory of this crucial moment or an attempt to distract the viewer. This unfortunate will see demons, ghosts or other weird phenomena, experience hallucinations, bounce between lives, have flashbacks and generally be in distress.

What separates JACOB'S LADDER from the rest is that on more than one occasion, Jake is subtly or blatantly told that HE IS DEAD. In spite of these revelations, Jake continues to stagger through the last moments of a life that will end on a Vietnam M.A.S.H unit operating table.


SOUL SURVIVORS uses the cheapest of deus ex macinae: this girl who gets in a car wreck that kills her boyfriend has freakish, unexplainable stuff happen to her (like seeing the BF's ghost) and in the end she wakes up in the hospital after battling a brain injury and her boyfriend isn't dead after all. feh!

Well, at least half this double-feature is worth watching!