1408 — movie review
Here’s a good rule to follow regarding Stephen King film adaptations: if he wasn’t in it, it’s good. Just compare Stand By Me and Thinner and you’ll see what I mean. Well, he doesn’t pop in for a cameo in 1408, so that’s already a good sign. Don’t get me wrong, Stephen King was a good read back in middle school because there’s just enough occult and curse word titillation and he wrote huge honking novels like It that any kid would be proud to complete. Besides, the foreshadowing eclipses any future thrills, minimizing shocks. In the film 1408, there are also those thunk-you-over-the-head forewarnings to dull the blow. There are the multiple blatant rosary references peppered in the scenes before Mike Enslin (John Cusack) even enters the title haunted hotel room and wouldn’t you know it, Mike later struggles with retribution for his blasphemous ways. Then there’s the big ‘ol bottle of super expensive alcohol (flammable hinthint) that Samuel L. Jackson kept alluding to.
After the coolness badass factor of Samuel L. Jackson or the offbeat cynical humor of John Cusack wears off, 1408 is flat, flat, flat. There are even single-dimensional ghosts that appear and disappear like wonky television static and multiple attempts to convey an electrical frequency link between realms, but it just wasn’t scary at all. I mean it was almost rehashing Ghostbusters effects or being trapped in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. The most thrilling scenes play off of Cusack’s skepticism and desperation, like when he’s tiptoe sidling along the face of the building on a 6″ ledge, or when he’s being chased by a spectre in the air vents. More surrealism and desperation like that would have really helped.
The first 3/4 of the movie is pretty good, not the most intense but does well to impart anticipation as negative events cycle towards escalating violence. But then nothing happens. Flooding effects and a fire, but really, nothing truly cracks Enslin’s psyche, even though crappy dialogue keeps assuring us that it’s happening to him all right. It would have been better to enforce that you can’t break a broken man. And gimme more tension! And I know Cusack is trying his darndest but the setting and editing and false ending after false ending just piles on the yawns and squashes any empathy you might have had for him (not his character mind you). And just when you think things couldn’t get more obvious, they actually shuffle in his dead daughter just to say cheesy things like “don’t you love me Daddy?”. Did they really need to do that? Maybe it’s targeted more towards parents, but 1408 just felt juvenile.
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