1408
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Rated: PG-13
Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson
Director: Mikael Hålfström
WorkNameSort: 1408
Our Rating: 2.00
Not only is the trailer for 1408 oodles more terrifying than the movie itself; worse, for the most part, this pop-horror trifle adapted from a Stephen King short story grows into a formulaic bore. The formula? A programmatic rotation of cheap, noisy scares and sappy, disease-of-the-month flashbacks designed to appeal to fans of supernatural horror and sentimental weepies, an oil-and-vinegar combination that will satisfy neither. John Cusack, equipped with one-liners his character would never spout and action moves his character could never pull off, is miscast as a cynical writer of haunted-house tour guides, debunking every ghost myth in the country before receiving a Dolphin Hotel postcard reading ‘Don’t enter 1408.â?� Cusack’s unlikable scribe is soon plunged into, as he puts it, a ‘Kafka-esqueâ?� hell of personal demons and creepy visual effects upon entering the titular room, despite multiple warnings from the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson). There are some neat sequences, directed with sadistic glee by Mikael HÃ¥fström (Evil), but the movie drops the ball by interrupting the maddening claustrophobia of the one-room terror with ease-inducing flashbacks of Cusack’s relationship to his disease-stricken daughter. Ho-hum.
This article appears in Jun 20-26, 2007.