The cynical and skeptical writer Mike Enslin writes books evaluating supernatural phenomena in hotels, graveyards and other haunted places, usually debunking the mystery. While writing his last book, he travels from Los Angeles to New York to spend one night in the evil room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, which is permanently unavailable for guests. The reluctant manager Mr. Gerald Olin objects to his request and offers an upgrade, expensive booze and finally the reports relating the death of more than fifty guests along decades in the cursed room. However, Mike threatens Mr. Oiln, promising to sue the hotel, and finally checks in the room. Along the night, he finds that guests of room 1408 can check out when they like, but they can never leave the room alive. —IMDb
Jan Mikael Håfström (born 1 July 1960 in Lund), known as Mikael Håfström, is a Swedish screenwriter and director. Håfström directed the exorcism thriller The Rite, which is based on a novel from Matt Baglio. —Wikipedia
Solid overall, but not without its faults... King's writing supplies 1408 with the kind of subtext and psychological power that is unusual in mainstream thrillers. Håfström has a strong sense of style and atmosphere, and Cusack's performance is strong. Unfortunately, it kind of takes a dive in its second/third act, replacing tension with loudness. Also, Mary McCormack's acting is unprofessionally bad.
In between good and bad. The acting and the technical work are doing decent jobs here. And this film captures quite an effective psychological and claustrophobic terror that will twists your mind because it mostly rely on atmosphere and psychological tension that gets under your skin instead of bombarding the audience with jump scares or grotesque violence. The lack of the film however because there was no back story about the room other than the deaths with some plot holes and questions that never get answered. And a bit too "safe", I mean it could have been a little scarier! To me, this movie started out great and went downhill from there.
(Originally written June 28, 2007)
If you add up the digits in 1408, you get 13, and also notice that because many hotels don’t have a 13th floor out of superstition, the 14th floor is actually… read review
It seems that the best Stephen King films are culled from his short stories (Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me among them). However, those also tend to be the dramatic films with little supernatural… read review
