A pale, hollow mockery of the original and a criminal waste of actors' talent. The original was designed to be a modern day interpretation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead with influences from a 19th century short story (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge), the artwork and photography of Francis Bacon & Joel Peter Witkin, along with philosophical and biblical references and imagery. The remake, on the other hand, is a dumpster fire of a bad PSA masquerading as a movie. The only credit I can give is to the main cast members who do their utmost to at least lift the film experience out of the realms of the unwatchable with some solid performances.
Updated 2022: I recently made an attempt to rewatch this film, on the off chance that perhaps my love of the original was clouding my judgement, and I have to be completely honest and say not only does my original rating and review still stand, but if anything I am even more disappointed in what this remake delivered. I will also reiterate that I do still think this film wasted the talents of the actors involved, and that the performances given were the only thing about this film that just managed to raise it from the quagmire of completely unwatchable (the cast here is definitely not the issue). Having also recently begun to dive further into a self study of topics such as film theory and film appreciation there is one thing I have realised, and that is I do tend to reserve my harshest criticism for those movies I believe had the potential to be far better than the half baked garbage they ultimately delivered to audiences; Jacob's Ladder (2019) falls squarely into that category of films for me. I don't believe there were too many fans of the original film, including myself who expected a scene for scene, beat for beat, carbon copy reshoot of the 90s version, but the fact that not only did the filmmakers here appear to have completely missed the very core element of the original film (one's ultimate acceptance of death, and the journey of 'letting go' that the dying brain/soul must go through in order to reach that state of acceptance), but that in doing so they also missed a myriad of emotionally powerful and socially relevant stories they could've told instead is deeply disappointing to me.
Updated 2022: I recently made an attempt to rewatch this film, on the off chance that perhaps my love of the original was clouding my judgement, and I have to be completely honest and say not only does my original rating and review still stand, but if anything I am even more disappointed in what this remake delivered. I will also reiterate that I do still think this film wasted the talents of the actors involved, and that the performances given were the only thing about this film that just managed to raise it from the quagmire of completely unwatchable (the cast here is definitely not the issue). Having also recently begun to dive further into a self study of topics such as film theory and film appreciation there is one thing I have realised, and that is I do tend to reserve my harshest criticism for those movies I believe had the potential to be far better than the half baked garbage they ultimately delivered to audiences; Jacob's Ladder (2019) falls squarely into that category of films for me. I don't believe there were too many fans of the original film, including myself who expected a scene for scene, beat for beat, carbon copy reshoot of the 90s version, but the fact that not only did the filmmakers here appear to have completely missed the very core element of the original film (one's ultimate acceptance of death, and the journey of 'letting go' that the dying brain/soul must go through in order to reach that state of acceptance), but that in doing so they also missed a myriad of emotionally powerful and socially relevant stories they could've told instead is deeply disappointing to me.