This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and, October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 3: But which way? Jacob’s Ladder
When people ask “what’s the scariest movie you’ve ever
seen?” there are a handful of movies that swirl around in my mind, but I
invariably choose Jacob’s Ladder. Tim
Robbins plays Jacob, a Vietnam vet who is mourning the loss of his son and experiences
flashbacks that become increasingly surreal and frightening. He sees monstrous
creatures and he becomes less and less able to tell what is real and what is
not. One of the spookiest scenes in the movie takes place at a nightclub where
Jacob sees a lizard tail wrapping around his girlfriend’s leg on the dance
floor; the strobe lights only adding to the confusion. It is probably the best
“freak out at a nightclub scene” in any movie. In another scene Jacob goes to a
doctor for his back and ends up being strapped to a stretcher and wheeled down
a dirty hallway with body parts strewn on the floor. This movie works best
because it combines the anxiety and unease of a psychological thriller with the
shock of visual scares. I don’t feel that the ending is a letdown or
anticlimactic, though I can understand how some people would feel that way, but
the journey to that ending is a chilling one.
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