John Cusack is an actor who defined an entire generation of love sick, semi sarcastic young men. He turned a possible stalker moment in Say Anything into one hell of a romantic if not a bit corny moment. In the late 90's and the beginning of this decade he reemerged as a prototype slacker in his 30's, again defining a generation with movies like High Fidelity. He has a certain unassuming charm that plays perfectly into his natural good looks and has made quite the career for himself. Stephen King is probably the most famous American author living and has had a considerable amount of his fiction turned into movies. Mostly they are awful when based on his scary fiction but in turning his short stories into movies, Hollywood usually does alright by him. I am not so much a fan of Mr. King but I am a big fan of John Cusack and from the first trailer I knew this was a movie I wanted to see.
Mike Enslin (Cusack) is an author who travels the country finding the scariest places, debunking paranormal myths and writing books about his excursions. We also know there is some tragedy looming in his past but the movie does not immediately divulge this past. Instead we catch glimpses of this past in nicely placed flashbacks weaved throughout the terse frightening moments. It actually provides a very nice balance throughout. Enslin is disillusioned with God and the afterlife due to this tragedy and after once writing a novel called The long road home he gives up these sort of coming of age novels in favor of this shock and awe type of book. He is often sent brochures and postcards from "haunted" hotels and comes across a postcard that just states "Don't enter 1408." When he realizes the digits add up to 13 he is a bit intrigued and sets out to stay there. When he calls to get the room the hotel staff refuses to let him stay in that room and Enslin has to resort to a possible lawsuit to get him in. He researches the place to find about 20 suicides in the room. When he gets to the hotel he is met by Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) and is again asked not to enter this room. Olin is the manager of the hotel where this room is and he gives Enslin an entire packet full of material about the room. Counting "natural" deaths, 55 people have died in the room. After a brief, somewhat humorous conversation between the two Enslin remains unmoved and says that no paranormal activity will keep him out to which Olin says "I didn't say anything about paranormal activity, it is just an evil fucking room." Therein lies the premise of the movie.
Once inside the room this movie becomes a raw, creepy, scary and unnerving tale of one mans struggle to stay alive. Ghosts haunts the room, the clock radio comes on at random moments really scaring the crap out Enslin and the audience. At first Enslin believes the hotel is playing tricks on him and then he believes the alcohol Olin gave him is spiked with some sort of hallucinogen as he sees and hears the most random haunting things including old home footage from Enslins life. Thus begins the weaving of the flashbacks. We find a happy Enslin with a wife and daughter, but soon that happiness turns to sadness as his daughter is diagnosed with a terminal illness and ultimately dies. At different moments he sees or hears his dead daughter in the room, tries to communicate with his estranged wife via yahoo video messenger only to have the room take over.
For the first 40 minutes or so inside the hotel room this movie is an edge-of-the-seat thriller as we wonder what he will see or hear next. We wonder if these ghosts are real or figments of an overactive imagination. The room haunts the mind of Enslin, but we are never sure exactly what the room is. Unfortunately the movies gets tripped up by the usual Stephen King issue- it just goes too far. The room's climate gets insane as he endures a blizzard, a flood and an earthquake and as the movie continues on it just gets more and more over the top. Cusack does his best to reel the movie back in but even he gets lost in this grandiose smug attitude that King has been living sweetly off of for so many years. We never get the answer we want, although we mostly get the ending we hope for and while watching an innocent child die and then turn to a skull and bones and ultimately bust is disturbing, it isn't terribly effective because it doesn't keep with the theme that the movie started with. It starts with less is more and ends with too much is too much.
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