Hafstrom and his technical team do wonders with altering the dimensions of the suite, introducing all kinds of physical threats - fires, floods and ghostly apparitions - within the minimalist set. But those films featured rather spacious, grandiose haunted houses, whereas most of “1408” takes place in just two rooms of an otherwise benign hotel. Other films like “The Shining” or the Robert Wise version of “The Haunting” have confined the characters as well as the viewers to a single setting. Cusack is virtually the whole show, and it’s a tribute to his skills as well as to those of the director, Mikael Hafstrom (who previously made the Oscar-nominated Swedish film “Evil” as well as the Clive Owen-Jennifer Aniston dud “Derailed”), that the claustrophobic film remains as effective as it is.
Jackson has a small supporting part as the hotel manager who tries to warn Enslin of the dark history of the room, and Mary McCormack has an even smaller part as Enslin’s estranged wife, who appears mainly in subliminal flashbacks. The movie might have benefited from a slightly more gradual character transformation, because his character is really the entire movie.
But when he checks into room 1408 of New York’s Dolphin Hotel, the terrifying happenings quickly turn a scoffer into a believer.Īctually, he turns a little too quickly into a hysteric begging to escape from his locked chamber. Although he plays up to his gullible readers, he clearly doesn’t buy into the supernatural trappings that he cynically exploits. Cusack plays Mike Enslin, a jaded writer who traffics in trashy books about cursed locales. Like “The Shining,” this chamber piece is set in a haunted hotel. “1408” is adapted from a Stephen King short story that bears some similarities to his famous novel “The Shining,” though it probably won’t duplicate the boxoffice success of Stanley Kubrick’s film. The presence of John Cusack in the cast - actually, he’s almost the entire cast - confirms the movie’s hip, humorous approach to the horror genre.
Actually, he turns a little too quickly into a hysteric begginAny film that uses the Carpenters’ pop hit “We’ve Only Just Begun” for scares instead of sentimentality must be credited with a quirky sense of humor.
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