Bob Dylan once said, "Don't criticize what you can't understand", yet a number of people who are clearly clueless about Jacob's Ladder have done just that.Jacob Singer's Book of the Dead journey of the soul is the thread that holds this dark, surrealistic quagmire together. I believe the biblical Jacob's Ladder was a ladder connecting Earth and Heaven, like the Earth-Sky conduits evident in so many Emily Carr paintings, hence the title choice by Bruce Joel Rubin.The more Jacob rages to hold onto life and to make sense of the kaleidoscope of horror that keeps exploding upon his consciousness, the harder his personal demons bite back. Only at the moment of final surrender can he see that the Enemy is himself, and he is able to release his previously earthbound soul from its prison of fear.As one astute reviewer put it, the ending is the point of the film.