| Review |
You might be excused for expecting that “1408” is going to be just a slimmed-down version of “The Shining.” It too is a Stephen King tale about a writer who visits a haunted hotel and finds himself beset by some nasty spirits. But it’s based not on a bulky novel but on a short story, and it’s not the huge, remote Overlook Hotel that’s haunted, just a single room on the fourteenth floor of the old but still distinguished Dolphin in the tony area of New York City. As to the staff, one could hardly claim that Mikael Hafstrom (“Derailed”) is Stanley Kubrick, nor is star John Cusack, for all his boyish charm, exactly Jack Nicholson.
But in spite of its derivative character in the King canon (in its exploration of a writer’s dark past it’s also reminiscent of “Misery” and “Secret Window”), surprisingly “1408” turns out to be an enjoyably old-fashioned exercise in chills and scares—another good adaptation of the master of potboilers. It may not have the breadth or depth of Kubrick’s “Shining” (which King thought moved too far away from his original—so much so that he misguidedly authorized a television mini-series to correct the damage), and it loses its way somewhat in the final reel, but for the most part it delivers more conventional satisfaction on a smaller scale.
Cusack plays Mike Enslin, a world-weary, cynical fellow who’s chucked a “serious” literary career in favor of a popular niche, writing tour guides about supposedly haunted inns and hotels with a debunking tone. After receiving a mysterious postcard about the Dolphin’s Room 1408, he forces the place to let him spend the night there, despite the urgent request of smooth manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) that he not do so—a warning that Enslin dismisses as just a performance to frighten the rubes.
But it quickly becomes clear that Olin’s advice was no joke. Over the course of an hour, measured by the strangely-acting clock radio in the place, it becomes very clear that all the horror stories about people dying in the room are true, and it’s not long before Mike is being assaulted by some force that can control inanimate objects, change climate, expand dimensions, make old specters appear, and toy with an occupant’s mind in bizarre and frightening ways. At various points it not only brings Enslin into direct confrontation with himself, but also compels him to face the spirits of his dead father (Len Cariou) and daughter (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), whose loss was the catalyst for his slide into disbelief. And it threatens his estranged wife (Mary McCormack), with whom he manages to make desperate contact via his computer as the room closes in on him.
This first hour of “1408” is very satisfying in genre terms. The screenwriters manage a nice mixture of vague menace and nifty humor through the first act, in which Enslin is introduced, and though the character is hardly more than a sketch, Cusack brings such charm and hangdog likableness to him that he feels like a lived-in person. With Enslin’s arrival at the Dolphin, of course, the emphasis changes, and though the conversation he has with Olin (a nicely oiled turned by the apparently ubiquitous Jackson) and the running comments the writer records on his microcassette have some fine verbal moments, the real meat is provided by the substantial effects team. (Paul Corbould was the special effects supervisor and no fewer than six visual effects supervisors are listed in the credits, as well as five companies—Moving Picture Co., Rainmaker Animation and Visual Effects U.K., Lipsync Post, Senate Visual Effects and Baseblack Visual Effects. Equally important are the sound effects designed and edited by supervisor Nigel Mills, working in tandem with Gabriel Yared’s cannily supportive score.) With so many hands at work it’s difficult to tell who’s responsible for what, but both visual and sound effects are terrific—imaginative and unsetting (and happily modest in the gore department)—and when joined with Cusack’s intense but sympathetic performance and Hafstrom’s clever juxtaposition of nail-biting sequences that build suspense, abrupt shock moments and tension-relieving bits of humor, they provide a rousing show.
Unfortunately, the picture takes a sudden twist with a half-hour or so left that was perhaps inevitable but is still depressingly familiar, and doesn’t completely recoup with a literal conflagration of a finale and a coda that’s a typical mixture of lightness and dark. If one wanted to quibble, he might also express disappointment that it’s never revealed who sent that postcard, and that not even the shallowest of explanations is provided as to why Room 1408 might be so malevolent—it just is, and was from the very beginning.
But logical analysis isn’t the strong suit of a picture like this, and on its own rather empty-headed terms, “1408” is a retro genre joy, a Halloween Haunted House of a movie that delivers the sort of pleasurable shivers and jolts that today’s exercise in torture porn don’t even attempt. It’s like a roller-coaster ride that starts slowly but gathers a walloping head of steam, and though it takes one bad turn near the close, that doesn’t spoil the excitement and fun it provides. |
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