Movie Review - 1408

In the year 1408, King Sigismund of Hungary founded the fabled Order of the Dragon. This year also saw the completion of what was then the largest known general compendium of knowledge, the Chinese Yongle Encyclopedia. I learned this all on Wikipedia. And it has nothing to do with the movie I saw earlier today.

As is revealed in the promotional trailers, the movie 1408 is based on a Stephen King short story by the same name. That is a spooky pedigree, so I entered the theater with fairly high hopes. It has been a while since I’ve seen a decent scary movie, and the recent glut of over the top horror doesn’t do it for me. I need a good story and an emotional hook to pull me along with whatever is moving the characters. So a movie based on a Stephen King story about a haunted room, starring one of my favorite actors seems like a good bet.

The movie literally begins on a dark and stormy night. Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is on his way to a haunted hotel in the middle of nowhere. He is a writer with a well-received series of haunted travel guides (10 Haunted Hotels, 10 Haunted Graveyards, etc). Early on, it is clear that he is a non believer and that his writing is not a work of passion, but just a job. (As an aspiring writer, I always have a soft spot for movies about writers -Wonderboys and Almost Famous come to mind)

After a few establishing scenes showing his solitary lifestyle, Enslin receives a postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York City with the message “Do not enter room 1408”. Being a quick thinking cynic, Enslin adds up the digits to equal 13. Intrigued by this clever turn, he calls the hotel to book the room. The phone clerk refuses the request and hangs up on him. Now totally baited, Enslin contacts his publisher for research and legal assistance. Armed with the advice that due to nondiscrimination laws in NYC an unoccupied hotel room cannot be refused to a paying customer, he arrives at the Dolphin and calmly demands his room.

This is when we meet the hotel manager, Mr. Olin, played by Samuel L. Jackson. I have mixed feelings about Jackson as an actor. Sometimes he is the coolest, baddest mofo on the screen and other times he comes off as simply out of place. He always seems to be playing himself, so I think I will blame his misses on the director and the casting department. In this role though, he nails it.

With polite sarcasm, Enslin demands to be allowed the key to room 1408. With polite menace, Mr. Olin resists, offering the room’s grisly history of madness and death. Recognizing Enslin’s stubbornness, Mr. Olin throws up two potent obstacles: expensive booze and a dossier of the room’s storied past. Enslin will not be deterred. He unceremoniously accepts both bribes and convinces Mr. Olin to give him the key.

What follows is a mixed back of genuine fright an overproduced flash. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, stop here and just know that I was under whelmed and didn’t end up in a shock-induced stupor like I hoped. But it did have some really good ideas mixed in.

If you have seen the movie, let’s pick at it a little and see what spooky juice we can extract (that was gross huh?)

The first steps into madness begin with the mysterious turndown service. When Enslin is not looking, chocolates appear on the pillow and the toilet paper is neatly refolded. This is good stuff, quick and tricky hits that are in no way supernatural but shouldn’t have occurred. Then continuing in the vein of simple things that can freak you out, the window, seemingly with a will of its own, slams on Enslin’s hand. A normal injury, horrible yes, spooky no. This is how you build psychotic tension. With his blood smeared on the walls and shower curtain, Enslin tries to call the front desk. The saccharine pre-scripted phone clerk- a whole other brand of horror- offers no help. Shouting out the window in desperation, he notices a man sitting in an apartment across the street. Waving his arms frantically, Enslin watches as the man who seemed to notice his plight begin to mimic Enslin’s own movements. Slowly he gestures, the man across the street gesturing in tandem. Straining to see the man’s shadow obscured face he lifts the table lamp to reveal that the man across the street is in fact a reflection of himself. I don’t know if there is an implied subtext of an other self refusing to help (Enslin is a self destructive character), but this is the first true vision of the supernatural forces at work in the room.

Suddenly, Enslin jumps back in shock as a crazed slasher bursts into the reflected view. This maniac looks like he is ready to be the new Jason or Freddy with his electrified hair and frenetic attack. Besides the visceral terror of this butcher, I was hoping for some sort of connection, some thread to give the character meaning. But unfortunately, even though he appeared again later, there was no connection to be made.

At this point in the movie, there is a genuine, scary thrill building. But the moment for me when my enjoyment and suspense began to fall apart was the scene showing the room’s first victims, the suicides. It was a neat special effect showing the miserable specters as a piece of black and white and Technicolor film. But the effects totally broke my link to the scene; it cut the wires that were suspending my disbelief. Up until this point, everything that was happening was “real”. But this effect and subsequent effects (the frosty room, the flood) all did the story an injustice.

The best scenes in the movie, while surreal, did not overuse special effects. When Enslin tries to escape the room, I did have a few moments of edge-of-my-seat suspense. The first attempt is through the ventilation duct. Preying on everyone’s claustrophobic tendencies, this scene shows

Enslin crawling headfirst through a roach infested labyrinth barely larger than his body. Inevitably a freak show character pops out from behind him to drive him back into the room. After gracefully dropping out of the ceiling vent, we get a brief respite of comic relief. With a hairdo reminiscent of a ruffled parakeet, Enslin wheezes, “That’s enough of that.”

His second attempt is to shimmy across the face of the building to the adjacent room’s window. Pacing off the distance, he measures 18 feet. Slowly, step by step he begins to traverse the distance. With his face pressed against the brick he moves across the ledge… 16… 17… 18… reaching with his lead hand, groping for the window frame he discovers the maddening power of the room…there is no window. There is only an unending expanse of brick and ledge. In an agoraphobic nightmare sequence, he retreats, narrowly returning to the incongruous safety of the room. Lying on his back he looks at the hotel diagram on the door. Moments earlier, this same diagram that gave him the idea to enter the room next door now shows a solid black building with only one room dead center with the simple phrase “you are here”. The terror of this scene is perfect. When he’s on the ledge, you know what is going to happen; you know the window won’t be there. But it is still scary because now he has to overcome the very base human fear of heights. This combination of an unseen supernatural force driving him to natural danger is where the movie works best.

The last engaging scene of the movie is Enslin being reunited with his deceased daughter. At first sight, she looks like a little demon in disguise. A freckled ragamuffin walking barefoot through glass and ash is at the same time repulsive and heart breaking. When Enslin embraces this ghost made of flesh, we assume that this is another trick of the room. We expect him to be holding the freak from the air vent or some other monster. But in a cruel turn, his daughter dies again in his arms. Just as before, this is a very real terror. Enslin’s pain and anguish ring far truer than any scream queen’s shriek at the sight of a bloody ghoul.

In the final scene, when Enslin plays his tape recorder we hear his daughter’s voice. Horror movies, whether psychological or slasher, are built on the concept that madness lies just below the surface of our normal lives. In the beginning of the movie, we are safely above the surface going about our business until something reaches up to ensnare us in terror. In the end, the surface is calm; the terror subsided. I always appreciate a story that takes one last jab to remind us that the madness is still down there, waiting. Enslin’s wife is understandably horrified. She has to deal with a frightening reality that he has been trying to convince himself was only a dream. In that last scene, it almost seems as though there is the subtlest smile on Mike Enslin’s face. I was satisfied with that ending and it looked like he was too.