Country: United States
Genre: Horror
Director: Mikael Håfström
Year: 2007
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
1408 is a haunted house (or in this case hotel room) story that isn’t the least bit scary, but that didn’t have to be a deal killer.
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a hack writer and die hard cynic who writes about haunted houses, haunted graveyards, haunted hotel rooms, etc. With his latest assignment, room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel, Enslin might have met his match.
The funny thing is that the most effective part of the movie takes place before Enslin even enters room 1408. That’s because screenwriters Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander (adapting a short story by Stephen King) initially make Enslin relatable. John Cusack easily embodies the smart aleck, taciturn writer who’s too cool for the room. The details about the writers’ life ring true.
The scene between Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the manager of the Dolphin Hotel, is also sharply written and played.
Unfortunately, shortly after Cusack enters room 1408, the movie starts to go to hell, both literally and figuratively. Not all at once, mind you. The first supernatural touches are gratifyingly subtle and allow Cusack to maintain character. But once the walls start bleeding and the ceiling breaks open and the wind chill factor hits 20 below, the movie starts being about the effects and less and less about character.
Oh, I know that the haunting increasingly brings in Cusack’s backstory — that’s supposed to give the story heart. But the screenwriters aren’t able to maintain the sense of realism in regards to character they brought off so effortlessly in the first 20 minutes or so of the picture. Admittedly, that’s a tall order when the special effects are blaring for attention, but that was the real challenge of 1408, to make us care about Mike Enslin on a human level even in the midst of all the supernatural events. The filmmakers aren’t equal to the task.
I admit that I enjoyed Enslin’s solution to his predicament, but in the end, 1408 registers as an okay time waster, but not much more than that.
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