1408

Reviewed by Alicia Glass
October 15, 2007

Director: Mark Hafstrom Studio: Dimension Films MPAA: R Website: Click Here

John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson in 1408. Courtesy of Dimension Films.

Based on a short story by Stephen King, 1408 features Mike Enslin, an author on paranormal phenomena and disbeliever, who discovers real terror when he stays in a genuinely haunted hotel room.

Okay, so there are plenty of bumps in the night at the Dolphin Hotel. It’s just one particular floor, stemming from one particular room, it’s fine, the hotel is still in business.

Not even John Cusack running around like a madman screaming at semi-empty walls could save this movie. Not even Samuel L. Jackson laughing maniacally while yelling, “I told you not to stay in room 1408!” can lend depth to whatever horrors the movie is failing to bring across. It seems to me that the main plot behind the bad-bad-bad-thing was simply this: every person who stayed in room 1408 was confronted with the worst thing they could possibly think of and killed themselves to escape it. Mike Enslin, who had lost his daughter to disease and never quite let her memory go, is confronted with these former terrors and some new ones concerning his daughter, but manages to come out on top somehow.

The way this movie was touted in previews and commercials, it did not seem to be a scary movie of personal discovery, it looked a lot more like angry ghosts out for revenge. And since that is what I expected, I was sorely disappointed.

This is the kind of horror flick that will simply fade into obscurity before long.

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