1408 (2007)

I read the short story by Stephen King and saw the movie straight away for comparison. The movie does a great job of extending the plot of the short story and making it more intense and giving it depth. The ending is different in the movie although there are some interesting parallels with the book. It definitely deserves a much higher rating and that is the reason for this review.

I hardly write reviews for horror movies but this one I just had to. One of the best film based on Stephen King's story. This movie sets a level in the minds of the audience. I would highly recommend this one who loves horror movies. This one has the perfect way of getting into your skin. The atmosphere, screenplay, cinematography and acting, everything will successfully send a chill down your spine. Its not the kind of horror film with ghastly faces and multiple voices. Its more about the mindplay or phobiatic. Something you would want and not want to see at the same time.

What do you do with a movie that, fairly early on, shows you that the main character suffers a serious surfboarding accident and thus is so obvious in setting up brain damage as a likely reason for the lengthier remainder of the film? What do you do with a movie that shows us how the man character can override the thermostat of his hotel room once, but then fails to do so again?? What do you do with a movie that hints at, then actually goes to a crawling-through-the ventilation-system scene with absolutely no meaningful or important result(s), ether positive or negative whatsoever for the main character??? What do you do with a movie that leads the main character to believe that a bottle of brandy may have been laced with an hallucinogenic drug, thereby accounting for what he sees as distorted and unreal, but then continues to let his situation worsen with continued drinking the brandy???? And so it seems too obvious that reviewers on the IMDB website who praise this movie have major flaws in logical thinking. And as a final closure to how ridiculous this movie truly fails, you go ahead and try to figure out the ending with no help or advice...

56 deaths have plagued an allegedly evil room on the 14th floor of an older hotel in New York City; writer John Cusack, once an author of fiction but now a specialist in books that debunk supernatural phenomena, is warned by the hotel manager not to check in--first and foremost because he doesn't want to clean up the mess. Well-mounted and made horror freak out, adapted from Stephen King's short story by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, is literate, polished and solidly enacted by Cusack as the skeptical (and atheist!) room guest. Director Mikael Håfström, despite suffering a case of "Shining"-itis, cannily mixes in sly humor with the shocks, as well as detailed minutiae which viewers might not catch on a first viewing. It should play well with aficionados of the genre, though others may find the ensuing violence assaultive (it bludgeons the audience). Also, the emphasis on assorted grotesqueries is more unpleasant than scary. ** from ****