1408

If there’s an author that is simultaneously responsible for creating fantastic work and ridiculous work, it’s the famous horror writer, Stephen King. For such a cool guy whose made a living out of creating an almost endless supply of books and short stories for his fans to get into, his work in the film and mini-series space has usually been very messy and resulted in some truly memorable pieces of media. With his work being home to several familiar cliches as well as several elements that don’t work outside of his own writing, most film versions of his stories either turn out hilariously awful in the best way, or serviceably bland with tons of over-the-top under-cooked elements. Every once and a while though, some manage to make that jump by either finding the right balance of telling the story while adapting certain elements like The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption, or by picking great talent behind the screen who can bring out the best elements of King’s writing in creating a visual representation, one being the movie of topic today, the 2007 psychological horror flick, 1408. Mike Enslin (played by John Cusack) is an author who specializes in investigating haunting hotels and debunking the claims that they in fact have supernatural visitors. Having lost faith in the supernatural after losing his daughter, Katie (played by Jasmine Jessica Anthony), Mike is challenged by a mysterious postcard to tackle the hotel, The Dolphin, and stay in its most dangerous room, 1408. Even after the hotel manager, Gerald Olin (played by Samuel L. Jackson) desperately tells him to not enter that room, Enslin refuses to listen and insists on staying. Once inside the cryptic room, he’s initially disappointed with how lackadaisical it appears to be, but soon feels that something is off about the room when things start to occur that shouldn’t be possible. Being unable to check out and with the room literally breaking him mentally by attacking his past, present, and even future, Enslin has to try and survive the room before he becomes the next victim that it claims. Based on short story King released in 1998, 1408 was met with positive reviews and even earned five times its production budget back at the box office (grossing $133 million against its $25 million budget). It feels like one of the few King movie’s that really captures his spirit of writing visually, resulting in a very engaging, well-paced, effectively acted and interestingly depicted portrayal of his story.

One of King’s best qualities as a writer is his ability to keep people invested in what the story will eventually build up to. His strengths are usually in his main characters (who he writes either very believably or very interestingly), his locations (which are usually unique for scary stories that have a lot of potential) and his build-up (which are excellent in suspense, but usually met with an unfortunate pay-off.) His flaws usually show in his larger stories, which get overly complicated, feature elements too silly to be taken that seriously, and include so many tie ins to his other stories that they just become bloated and hard to piece together. This explains why his best work seems to be in his smaller stories like Misery, Gerald’s Game, and even 1408. They aren’t restricted by overly complicated reasoning’s, it’s just a person stuck in a situation that could end their life, and that is usually enough to keep people dying to know what’s going to happen. This movie shows off where a great concept like this can be taken; everybody is aware of haunted hotels (it’s practically a cliché) but what if the situation was more about breaking the individual mentality instead of physically. Not only does this brilliantly tie into the character’s story and emotional feelings, but it also allows for a completely new type of fear quality not seen in this type of set-up, one that’s disorienting but solid enough to understand how its messing with the individual, almost like it enjoys torturing the viewer as much as it does the main character. Its handling of its atmosphere is perfect; this story features scenes and elements that would normally be seen as over-the-top or even ridiculously funny (as they have been in other King stories), but since the plot enjoys breaking the boundaries of reality, it can get away with these ideas and they fit perfectly. The script written by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski does a great job adding to the original premise of the story and fleshing out components of the lead’s life story in a large enough manner to get the themes and narrative purpose across, but not too much to the point that it becomes too bloated, it’s the perfect amount. The directing by Mikael Håfström is very impressive, being able to emulate the style of King very effectively while also bring his own visual and psychological touches to make for an authentic but distinct experience. Its wonderfully paced out, it has great set-up and has great eventual pay-off, and it manages to weave its story into its horrifying elements in a brilliantly clever way. The one downside to this almost abstract manner of presentation is that it can never really have a satisfying ending or one that feels effectively conclusive (even the movie had three endings made because it couldn’t decide how to end it correctly). The theatrical ending isn’t bad by any means, but it becomes more like a traditional horror film while the rest of the movie was doing so well at being such a distinct entity.

Most of the characters feel like typical Stephen King creation in the best sense of the word. While these kind of roles wouldn’t normally be that engaging in a story that’s not as compact as this one, since the location itself feels like the leading element of this film, the characters aren’t stuffed into an overly complicated situation and are just allowed to breath and exist as they are. Because of this, all the characters (despite the limited amount of them) are pretty good and work very well. Enslin is very well written; with a past that isn’t directly told but seen throughout the film, and a motivation that comes across as petty and jerkish at first but becomes more understandable as it goes on. John Cusack, who’s usually known for being underutilized in rom coms, does very well at playing this man who starts off as distant and in-your-face cocky, but who slowly gets broken down by this room to the point that his truly broken and even pitiful self comes to the surface. He has to do a lot of the heavy lifting in this film as it is mostly just a story of him stuck in a single room, and he does that very well. It gets to a point in the story where it does such a great job showing how physically and psychologically trapped he is by this room, that it brings into question almost everything else that happens later on, being one of those great psychological scary films that warps reality in such a fashion that makes you question everything, even when it seems like everything is good and safe. Despite the little amount of screen-time Samuel L. Jackson gets as the hotel manager, he carries himself with such conviction through his wordage that he was a perfect choice for the role, and even small cameos from people like Mary McCormack, Len Cariou and Jasmine Jessica Anthony are done in a believable enough way to fit in with this tone and atmosphere.

The dialogue for this movie is classic Stephen King even to the point where it feels like its literal lines ripped right from the story, yet bizarrely enough that manages to work in this film. The dialogue feels very quick and even slightly cheesy in nature, but the pace the actors deliver them at never makes it feel too unnatural and this kind of narrative feels like it matches the style of wordage that’s been spoken. This room has such presence in this story despite never doing anything drastically ‘spooky’ like literally gaining sentience, but it definitely feels alive. The entire area feels like a coffin that boxes in any sense of normalcy and comprehension and throws it away while unloading feelings of regret, pain, and intense grief, to the point where the occupant loses themselves. The film captures this through great cinematography by Benoît Delhomme with shot set-ups that make this environment feel larger than life while also visually underwhelming. Its ironically the plainness of this space that makes it horrifying, as the notion of something bad happening in literally the most harmless looking of places really works to the film’s favour, and the mental struggle of being unable to escape from something that should be easy adds onto the tension. The blending of the movie’s slower pace, goofy but otherworldly effects, and mind-bending reality seems to scream pure Stephen King in every frame but makes it legitimately unnerving rather than goofily awkward. It isn’t a typical ‘’boo’’ movie, instead relying on the tortured psyche of the main character to deliver some ‘’metaphorical’’ ghosts that haunted him even before he stepped into the room. Its clever at not just relying on the past but combing it with his uncertain future to create a horrible present, one that he’s forced to be stuck in and not only relive painful memories but experience harsher ones from the future.

One of the best qualities a book can have is being able to capture the audience within a moment in time to the point where you feel trapped by it. King has done that very well in his stories, and 1408 captured that perfectly as well. It’s funny to imagine that one of King’s best adapted stories comes from a short story that doesn’t even feature anything that physically scary, rather relying on the deconstruction of the main character’s mind to create something chilling in a different sense. It’s a film that feels 100% Stephen King in the best way possible; the situation is recognizable, but taken to a whole new level, the characters are familiar, but delivered in a way that only adds to the atmosphere as oppose to take away from it, and it creates an uncomfortable, disturbing and haunting environment without having to do anything that scary or leave what looks like a simple hotel room. Its subtle and perplexing and one that loves to make you question your own place of residence, 1408 is one to definitely check out.