1408 ~ (and a bit for trying)

5th Sept '07

(Update - I was hard on this flick so I've upped the worm rating. It was a well made film but considering they were trying, it didn't make it. Still better than the majority of films but still, can't win them all.)

I think John Cusack is one of the best actors of his generation. I've grown up watching his films and appreciate his style and dead-pan comic delivery. I don't think he can be beat doing black comedies. But he certainly can be beat doing horror. Sorry John. This is a Stephen King story and as such can go either way when presented on screen. Even having Samuel L Jackson in the distance does nothing for the content and feel of the film or story.

A disillusioned writer spends his life visiting 'haunted' houses and writing up the results. He's cynical. About everything. His wife and he are separated and it takes a while to find out the reason why. Once the audience is in on the sub-story, the entire film takes a turn... for the worse. Before this is explored, he checks himself into room '1408' a supposedly hugely possessed and evil room at the Dolphin Hotel in New York. Jackson, the Manager, makes the emphatic warnings not to stay in the room but Cusack is having none of it.

So in he goes... for a horror film, I didn't find it scary. For a psycho-drama, not interesting enough. The effects were well, effective but there just wasn't enough depth or interest to the horror and dementia that ensues.

It could have gone so much further and delivered so much more.

For those of you who scare easily, this is a great 'horror' for you... just beware of the ghoul with the axe!!! (Ha, ha!) And you don't baulk at a little blood, do you? Or rooms which possess??? Enough, already! Enjoy if you have to.