Director: Mikael Håfström
Starring: John Cusak, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack
Tagline: "No one lasts more than an hour."
Random Trivia: Based on the short story by Stephen King, which was actually started as an example excerpt in his book On Writing. Fans were intrigued by the little tale he started to outline how to flesh out an idea, and urged him to complete the tale. The finished product eventually appeared as part of an audiobook collection, and later in the collection Everything's Eventual.
So a little while back - my notes don't have dates but sometime around the end of June - I sparked up a little something and did a Stephen King double bill, consisting of 1408 and The Mist. I'll be reviewing each separately, in the order I watched them, but in all honesty, regardless of order, these two films make a cool little double feature if you want to be creeped out.
1408 goes further into the creeps and scares realm - and marks one of the few decent big-screen horror adaptations of King's work. The others would, perhaps, be Carrie, The Shining, and Misery (if you want to call the latter horror and not a thriller).
In general, the best King movies are the non-horror: Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. So it's nice to see a few decent titles come along based on his traditional scary stories.
On to my notes:
- John Cusak in a horror flick - awesome!
- It's PG-13. And amazingly, it's better than most R-rated horrors in the past few years.
- It's just an evil fucking room.
The basic plot - Mike Enslin (Cusak) writes about haunted houses, motels, and other locations - but doesn't believe in them. He's about the get a fucking wake-up call (Stephen King, to my knowledge, doesn't visit them - but he sure writes about them!).
Enslin gets this little tip at the beginning - a postcard from the Dolphin Hotel that says "Don't go in room 1408" - the numbers of which add up to 13. And, being there's no 13th floor in hotels or most office buildings, 1408 is technically located on the 13th floor.
A more interesting angle, however, is this - who sent the post card? It's never explained, but I like to think that the room sent it. That's right. The room itself. Having slept too many years under the watchful eye of Samuel L. Jackson's Gerald Olin, it's hungry again... that's just my little theory.
Olin, of course, does NOT want Enslin going into that room. It has a history, a nasty one. Suicides, murders, and natural deaths go into the dozens. Mutilation and disease result should one venture in too long. Think of it, Olin says, like a room full of poison gas. You could hold your breath for a little while, and a minor moment or two of exposure might not kill you. But stay too long, or make too many visits... No, it's just not a good idea to go in that room. But thanks to some legal technicalities, a hotel apparently has to rent you any room you request so long as it's vacant. Is this true? I have no idea.
In any case, when it comes to Enslin, Olin points out, the Dolphin Hotel doesn't need the publicity - and he doesn't want to clean up the mess. How valiant.
The second Enslin ultimately does set foot in the room, however, the tone is set. And the second the clock radio flicks on and begins to blast an oldie - singing "we've only just begun..." - the countdown is on. Literally - shortly thereafter, a sixty minute timer begins the march on down to impending doom.
As the count goes on (a theme that comes back later in the movie - no one ever lasts more than an hour in 1408, according to Olin, and there's a good reason), Enslin winds up more and more paranoid, more and more fucked up, more and more frightened; his only companion his personal tape recorder where he takes notes. A handy device for a movie such as this, but it actually did feature in the original story.
You have to wonder - did the room take this long to burrow into his mind?
There's some added back story in the movie about a dead daughter for Enslin and his wife (McCormack) - it pays off pretty well, although there's also a bit about his dad that's a bit tired. Still, this is a movie based on a short story that really only has two main characters, so it's understandable that the script needed some fleshing out.
Perhaps it's time to check out?
Final thoughts: for a PG-13 horror, 1408 gives you more scares per minute than most of its R-rated cousins. It's creepy, old fashioned horror. The atmosphere really sells it - 1408 is an evil fucking room. The end will give you chills if you're not completely desensitized to, well, everything. And Cusak and Jackson seem to be enjoying themselves. Come on... go inside...
Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)
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