That's one of those films where it is almost impossible to write anything about without spoiling it. I won't try. Jacob (an amazingly young Tim Robbins) has been in Vietnam. And he has been almost killed there. No, that's wrong. He is dreaming his way around the plot. There is the first scene which kind of gives away the reason for the succeeding events. Someone says "Jesus, this shit is something else" when smoking a joint in the Mekong delta in 1971 just before a Vietcong offensive is supposed to happen. Soon after that line there is a twist. The peaceful GI camp turns into armageddon. But not because of the Cong.

This is an eclectic work. It takes elements of horror movies and mashes them with a post Vietnam trauma due to a drug experience. A clever mix of the story frame of Ambrose Bierces's An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge and the Clockwork Orange drug treatment reversed.

Four Stars. Only because I had a crush on the small-breasted Elizabeth Peña (Jezebel). It would have been just about 7/10 if I had settled for a more precise scale and if I had been more objective.

IMDB User Rating: 7.3/10 (12,398 votes)