1408

1408
Starring: John Cusack
Directed by: Mikael Håfström

Style: Supernatural Thriller
Blood and Guts: 1
Fright Factor: 2
Laugh Factor: 0
Weapons of choice: Psychological Warfare
Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Mike Enslin (Cusack) wishes he could see dead people. After losing his daughter, he becomes obsessed with exploring the most haunted locations he can find. After a night stay, he writes up each in his own sort of Zagat's Guide to Haunted Places. One day, he hears about room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. The staff doesn't want him to stay, as many people have died or been driven insane by the room. Thinking it a ploy, he badgers them into letting him stay. Once there though, he realizes that it is far worse than anyone could warn him of.

based upon a Stephen King short story, 1408 is an exercise in classic horror. All of the frights are built out of variations of nightmares and phobias as the room tries to drive Enslin over the edge. Add to that a clock radio that spontaneously plays The Carpenters "We've Only Just Begun" and you have genuine creepy environment.

However, part of the weakness of this film is that it tells you from the beginning that all of the inhabitants are driven mad, and any deaths are self-inflicted. Therefore, Enslin's only real danger is himself. All the apparitions, while creepy, can never go beyond being a thrill into a deeper sense of horror as they have no physical power over Enslin based on the rules of the game that the movie sets up.

Also, none of the nightmares are ever repeated, so there is very little build-up between the scares, so the audience never really reaches a level of true fright. Something eerie happens, you hit the pay-off moment, and then all the tension is lost because something else is being built. Unlike other horror films, where the sense of danger is mostly constant even if we are not quite sure the source, 1408 plays out like a series of mini-horror films, a kind of textbook of horror films if you will. Each different scare shows a different horror technique, a sort of How To for any type of scene, but then it moves on to another one without any sort of tension carried over.

The acting is great, as I genuinely believed the character's terror and subsequent emotional stress with dealing with the death of his daughter, and I though the film was very effective with being creepy without using any on-screen violence other than occasional shots of characters hung or leaping to their death. The style is there for making this a great film, which I think part of what makes it so frustrating that it doesn't live up to the talent involved.

Ultimately, this film is interesting to watch but never gets beyond mediocre because it never connects the dots. A horror movie needs to grab the audience and drag them kicking and screaming through the movie, and this never does.