MOVIE REVIEW: 1408

Stephen King writes terrific stories. I love his "Dark Tower" series and believe that the genius of his work gets overshadowed by the overhyped "Harry Potter" series. Not to say "Harry Potter" is a bad thing, because it's not. Unfortunately for King most of his work gets turned into crappy movies. "Thinner" immediately comes to mind. However, with "1408" (add up the numbers people) we see that the words can be transferred to the screen in a meaningful way.
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a writer who travels around the world in search of the most haunted locations. He then turns out book after book about the top ten most haunted states, houses, graveyards, etc. Early on he states that while he does not believe in ghosts, nothing would thrill him more than to discover some sort of concrete evidence that hauntings do exist. So along comes a post card in the mail from The Dolphin Hotel in New York wit the words "Don't stay in 1408." Cute. So Enslin calls the hotel to make a reservation in 1408, but is denied as the room has been closed forever by management. Due to a legality in the state of New York, Enslin is allowed to make the reservation and he goes to meet with the manager of the hotel, Gerald Olin (Samuel L Jackson). Olin tries his best to prevent Enslin from becoming the next victim to the room. Since the hotel opened, twelve people have committed suicide and over thirty people have died of natural causes in that room. Nobody has lasted more than one hour. The owners of the hotel do not see fit to close it down and ignore the problem by closing off the room to the general public. People have drowned, cut their own throats, etc. Olin explains that a maid was locked in the bathroom for only a few minutes and when she was found, she had cut her own eyes out. So Enslin stays in the room and remains a skeptic as he believes "there are no ghoulies and ghosties and even if there were there is no God in which to protect us." So Enslin stays in the room and begins to experience strange occurences. Things move on their own, the bedside table clock begins to countdown from sixty minutes. Then ghosts appear, climates change and we encounter so many twists and turns that we are never quite sure what exactly is happening, or where it is happening.

What "1408" does well is it takes all the best elements of related movies and packs them in here. While the movie never manages to be completely scary, it does succeed in being totally off the wall creepy. There are a lot of "oh that's so mean" moments, too.

"It's an evil fuckin' room." I do believe that Samuel L Jackson has pretty much coined the word "fuck." It has become his calling card in the same way "I'll be back" was to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He does the most with his cameo, and truly explains the backstory well enough to get us anticipating what the room actually has in store. The movie also works because John Cusack carries it so well. People tend to forget what a great actor he is. Of course, it is hard to tell when he does crap like "Must Love Dogs" or "America's Sweethearts." He is definitely underutilized in the world of film, but here he shows that he can carry an entire film on his shoulders. This is definitely the key to the film's success as most of the film is Cusack by himself."1408" is a good horror movie that makes you uneasy more than it makes the hairs on your neck stand up. I suppose the best way to describe it would be to call it a Twilight Zone episode, but a damn good Twilight Zone episode.