(dir. Mikael Hafstrom)
 |
| Dimension Films |
A paranormal guidebook writer who doesn’t believe in ghosts
hopes to revive his career by checking into the Dolphin Hotel’s infamous Room
1408, where he experiences a lifetime of terror all within an hour’s time.
Stephen King novels, and adaptations, are filled with
protagonists who are writers. It’s become an expected, though welcome trope of
his work. 1408 once again gives us a protagonist
who’s a writer, but because he’s not a fiction writer, but rather the author of
the kind of non-fiction America’s greatest haunts book, he and the way he
reacts to genuine horror feels unique. John Cusack’s performance as Mike Enslin
is masterful and this movie wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as it is
without his cynical turn as a washed up writer and atheist. I think what makes
this King adaptation one of the stronger ones is how complete Enslin feels as a
character, right down do his horrible fashion sense (a sports coat over a Hawaiian
shirt? Please leave). Cusack has the guy pegged down, from the way he enters a
room with a vague, undeserved arrogance, to the way he records notes for his
books with a needlesome pretension. No, Enslin isn’t likeable, but he feels so
much like a real person rather than a forced performance of unlikability, which
ultimately makes him a bit endearing or at least someone we can empathize with.
The room, 1408, is plagued by a history of horrible suicides
which the hotel’s manager, Olin, given both ominous charm and menace by Samuel
L. Jackson, describes in great detail. No one has ever survived in 1408 more
than an hour, he intones. The film really plays with the elemental forces at
work within the supernatural. There are ghostly apparitions, that appear perversely
illuminated like TV images, but there’s also the matter of the thermostat which
takes the room from an inferno to a blizzard, and a faucet that floods the
whole room in an attempt to drown Enslin. For a film primarily set in one
location, Hafstrom really allows the film’s production design to put Enslin
through the ringer. Ultimately, these visions, and painful accidents that
Enslin goes through while within the room serve as an attempt by supernatural
forces to drive him mad, and push him to the edge of rational sense. But Enslin
has already been driven to the edge by the death of his young daughter, and
thus the confrontation plays out like a battle of wills between the physical
world and the supernatural, providing a small chance for Enslin to possible
regain his faith. While the ending doesn’t hit the mark it needed
to, there’s still some powerful concepts at play here, handled in a visually
clever way.
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