MOVIE REVIEW: '1408'


From today's Oregonian ....




The surprisingly sharp "1408" just begs comparisons to "The Shining." Both films are adapted from Stephen King stories. Both films track the mental breakdowns of writers of uncertain talent. And in both films, those breakdowns are spurred by hotels -- hotels possessed by sadistic evil spirits who find a hack's Achilles heel, then stab it repeatedly.

This time around, the hack is Mike Enslin (John Cusack). He's a formerly ambitious novelist reduced to writing "Ghost Survival Guides," assigning "skull ratings" to haunted tourist traps. He's self-centered and bored, carries some trunk-sized emotional baggage, and has never actually seen anything remotely paranormal.

So his interest is piqued when he hears about Room 1408 (add up the digits) at New York's Dolphin Hotel. Literally dozens of people have died of natural and unnatural causes in 1408 over the last 95 years -- so many, in fact, that the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson) refuses to rent the room.

But Enslin uses legal loopholes to force a one-night stay. Armed with a cigarette, a laptop, a bottle of good Scotch and a tape recorder, he settles in … and, without spoiling anything, unsettles just as quickly.

It would be evil to reveal anything that happens during the movie's witching hour. But I will say this: The movie strips down to Cusack, a tape recorder and an environment that gets stranger and stranger. For the most part, it gleefully scalpels your nerves. And you'll never hear The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" quite the same way again.

In a horror marketplace that too often stoops to cheap scares and "torture porn," it's kind of wonderful that "1408" builds its scares honestly: with earned suspense, eeriness, and unsettling small touches that add up (I particularly enjoyed the way a fluttering curtain kept creeping into the film frame like a ghost-sheet). Director Mikael Håfström and his writers actually take their time setting things up: One of the film's best scenes is a conversation in which a Jackson spends a good 10 minutes carefully explaining why Cusack really, really shouldn't check into 1408. And Cusack anchors it all with a committed performance in which he spends the bulk of the movie talking to himself. This is largely a one-man, one-room show, and Cusack owns the stage.

If I have one real critique of "1408," it's this: It gets less precise and more bombastic toward the end, undermining the psychological horror and eeriness that set the film apart from every other horror film in theaters. But while this keeps "1408" from reaching "Shining" levels of greatness, it only slightly loosens the hooks Håfström and his team have sunk into viewers by that point. By and large, this is serious white-knuckle fun.
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B-plus; 94 minutes; rated PG-13 for thematic material including disturbing sequences of violence and terror, frightening images and language.

'1408' (The Oregonian, June 22, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - June 22, 2007 at 11:44 AM        

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