Movie review: 1408

by John P. Meyer

When pop-parapsychology writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack) checks in to room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, he doesn't expect to encounter anything more horrible than bed bugs or an empty mini-bar - either of which might have sent him screaming from the building.

See, Mike has made a post-traumatic-life-changing- incident career out of writing anthologies about his experiences visiting so-called haunted places (i.e., "100 Haunted Hotels"), which he rates on a "shiver scale" of 1 - 10. His most recent "conquest" is an off-the-beaten-track B&B whose eager married owner/hosts practically tongue-trip all over themselves relating the lurid details of the deaths that have occurred on premises. But Mike just wants the key to his (haunted) room so he can hit the (haunted) hay. And the (haunted) mini-bar. (Which, in the decor of the house, turns out to be tiny booze bottles in a no-doubt haunted wicker basket). Ever the professional, he goes through the motions of taking the usual em readings. As usual, nothing spooky shows up - at any wavelength.

But the hosts have done a creditable job talking the place up, so Mike's shiver-scale score for the Over-The-Hill Inn (or whatever it's called) is 5 skulls.

Back at his garret-like apartment on the Southern California coast, Mike goes through the accumulated mail to prospect for his next shiver site; as one might imagine, every guest facility with the faintest whiff of ghostiness in its history wants the kind of free publicity that one of his visits will bring. Among the slick three-fold tourist brochures he finds a postcard from New York's Dolphin Hotel, with the cryptic hand-printed message: "Don't stay in room 1408."

Bait, thinks Mike: obviously bait.

Like a heedless trout, he bites, calling the Dolphin to request a stay in the room. They refuse to rent it, telling him that it's simply not available, regardless of the date of his stay. (NOTE to hotel staff wishing to not rent out a particular room: simply deny that it exists. Paint over the door or something; remove the number placard; turn it into a spacious inter-dimensional broom closet.)

So Mike makes a big stink out of getting into the place, consulting with his publisher's legal eagle (who determines that anti-discrimination legislation makes it unlawful to deny a paying guest access to any available room). His foot successfully in the door, he heads to New York for a one-night stay.

It'll be definitely be no more than one night, because New York harbors bad memories for Mr. Enslin: his ex-wife Lily (Mary McCormack) lives there, and the reason they're exes stems from the blame and guilt they experienced over the death of their daughter. It's a period of his life that Mike works hard to keep far, far behind him.

The Dolphin is managed by Sam Jackson (as Gerald Olin), which most would take as a warning sign in itself. Olin tries to talk him out of staying in the room because - as he puts it - he simply doesn't want to clean up the mess. But even after documents (8 x 10 glossies and newspaper clippings) are produced detailing the scores of murders and suicides that have occurred in the room down through the years, the hard-headed Enslin refuses to budge: he WILL stay overnight in the room, come Hell or high water. (Ahem.)

What follows is the expected (verging on formulaic) slow buildup of tension as Mike explores the confines of his apparently-innocuous, and in fact quite comfortable, hotel room: three stars on any frequent lodger's scale, regardless that the fixtures are a bit dated. All seems normal, except for the fact that the temperature is steadily rising to the point that Mike begins to sweat; then, the clock radio starts an ominous countdown and the window sash pulls a fast one. The gloves have come well and truly come off.

Room 1408 (which, as those versed in hotel lore may already have guessed, is actually on the 13th floor) turns out to be Mt. Everest of haunted places; it is, as manager Olin has so succinctly advised, an "evil f@#king room."

As in other of Stephen King's most resonant tales, 1408's traditional horror trappings are presented in terms of a character's personal internal demons - so in Mr. Enslin's case he's forced to confront head-on the two most disturbing elements of his past, specifically the aforementioned loss of his daughter and the slow, degrading institutionalized demise of his dad. No writer is better at conveying the loneliness and inevitability of death on a first-name conversational basis than Stephen King, and director Mikael Håfström (Derailed) translates this acquaintanceship to the screen effectively.

While there are plenty of tinglingly-pleasing supernatural effects on display - along with some good old-fashioned "BOO!" events - the most effective chills come in the form of disorienting momentary glimpses of a reality that's skewed plumb off its tracks onto a sinister parallel funicular. When he leans out the window overlooking a busy New York street, Mike suddenly hears nothing: the traffic noise is gone. It's as if he's been encapsulated in a hermetic bubble. As the room gears up for its big horror finale, the mundane Currier & Ives prints on the wall begin revising their content: where before the students at the foot of a chastely-dressed matron gazed in rapt attention as she read from the bible, they now scramble for suckling rights at her lustfully-bared breasts; an English pastoral hunting scene turns into a nightmare scenario of rabid dogs attacking their astonished masters; a clipper ship sailing uneventful seas becomes the locus of a raging typhoon.

For this viewer, though, the most terrifying episode in the film involves a spit-take where the substance expelled consists of a fine vintage cognac. The horror... the horror!

BAD REP: "You do drink, don't you?" - Olin to Enslin

"Of course. I just said I was a writer." - Enslin's reply

THE HORROR OF THE REAL: "As you are, I was; as I am, you will be." - Enslin's decrepit father, from his wheelchair in the antiseptic room of a nursing home