1408 (2007)

In this spooky film about a haunted hotel room, John Cusack plays Mike Enslin, a disgruntled paranormal writer who is now writing his third book, which is about the most haunted hotel rooms in the country. Enslin obviously is discontent with his work and his own private life. There are glimpses shown of something from his past that haunts him in a much more real way than any of the rooms he visits. Enslin’s journey brings him to the Dolphin hotel where he is warned, no begged by the manager Gerald Olin(Sam Jackson) to not go in the room. Enslin believes this is all a ploy, part of the spicing up of the story and believes Olin is essentially exaggerating for a part in the book, which will inevitably bring the hotel publicity. Despite much persuasion on Olin’s part, Enslin insists on staying in the room. He is warned that no one has lived longer than one hour in the room. Again, a story Enslin believes is a perpetuated hotel myth. After five minutes of entering the room, Enslin realizes he was wrong. Dead wrong. 

 

After if becomes abundantly apparent that the room itself is either haunted or Enslin has lost his mind he begins to panic. The eerie sound of The Carpenters “We’ve only just begun” is bone chilling. On the clock radio a countdown begins. It doesn’t take too long before Enslin’s own haunted past comes into the play with the evil room and the two are meshed together in a nightmare that no one can hear. 

 

1408 definitely had some things working for it. It steered itself away from your typical horror flick and stuck to a more psychologically disturbing genre. There were certainly a few scenes that made you jump, but this movie was much more of a old style ghost story than anything, which was a refreshing. Cusack, who’s done a horror flick in the past (Identity), pulled the intensity of his role off well, especially considering he was the main living object of the entire film. 

 

Some things that didn’t work for the movie happened after the initial “scary” scenes. After a little while, some of the ghostly things seemed to fall into the been there, done that category. Also, some of the pacing slowed down about mid-way through the film and it lost some of it’s momentum, making the ending, which otherwise was very good, a little anit-climatic. 

 

The best part of the movie was the first ten-fifteen minutes in the hotel room, when the little things start happening. It’s completely unnerving. All in all 1408, while in parts a let-down, was a solid ghost story that had excellent old school antics and story telling going on. That in itself was a breath of fresh air from the new-school jump out and boo! you films. I would recommend this movie to anyone who liked films like “Poltergeist”, “The Others”, and “Stir Of Echo’s”. 1408 gets two and half out of four stars.