‘Jacob’s Ladder’ Remake Trailer Goes to Hell and Back

The long-delayed remake of Jacob’s Ladder is finally getting released this summer, and there’s now a trailer to prove it. One thing is abundantly clear after watching the footage on display here: this looks absolutely nothing like the original film. It’s commendable to try something new rather than rehashing the same material, but I’m not so sure this is the right direction. Judge for yourself by watching the Jacob’s Ladder remake trailer below.

Jacob’s Ladder Remake Trailer

Have you ever heard of the movie Deathdream? Also known as Dead of Night, it was released in 1974, and came from director Bob Clark (Black Christmas). It’s not exactly the most well-known horror film, but it definitely has its fans. In the flick, a solider is killed in Vietnam…only to return home, seemingly alive and well. And then creepy stuff happens.

I bring up Deathdream because that appears to be the movie being remade in this trailer (which first debuted at EW), not Adrian Lyne’s haunting 1990 cult classic Jacob’s Ladder. Sure, there are a few nods to the original Jacob’s Ladder here and there: a character gets dunked into a bathtub full of ice; demonic forces are out and about; characters shake their heads in a creepy, unnatural way. But beyond that, this Jacob’s Ladder remake looks a hell of a lot more like Deathdream.

In this Jacob’s Ladder, “Jacob Singer is finally getting his life back together after the death of his brother in Afghanistan. He has a beautiful wife, a newborn child, and a successful career as a surgeon in a VA hospital. When a stranger approaches him and tells him that his brother is actually alive and living in an underground shelter with other homeless vets, Jacob’s life starts to unravel. He begins hallucinating, starts to think he is being followed by violent attackers, and becomes paranoid about the truth of what really happened to his brother.”

Needless to say, this is vastly different than the original. And that’s fine, in theory. But why even bother to call this Jacob’s Ladder? It’s not like Jacob’s Ladder is a hot title most people recognize, like Child’s Play. And while I’m all for remakes going in their own direction, the direction here looks…bad. The vibe this trailer gives off is akin to the type of forgettable horror titles Dimension Film churned out in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Jacob’s Ladder, starring Michael Ealy, Jesse Williams, and Nicole Beharie, opens August 23.

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