1408 is the Shining Light.
Once again we’ve wandered back into Stephen King territory but instead of a huge moldering resort hotel in the Colorado mountains, we’re shut up in one of those tiny, claustrophobic rooms that even the most posh of New York hotels feature.
But Room 1408 (adds up to 13 – get it – on the nonexistent 13th floor) has its own unique and bone chilling haunts.
King even gets to again trot out one of his most unnerving observations from The Shining – that every hotel has its own horror stories - true but often untold tales of murder, suicide, torture and death.
What terrible things really happened on that innocent looking bed in the corner?
The film benefits from a first rate cast – John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack and Tony Shaloub. Cusack’s finely tuned but ever increasing intensity morphing into overt terror is particularly impressive.
Swedish director Mikael Håfström knows how to layer on the menace. He starts his film in a straightforward manner but begins to throw in subtle but unsettling odd angles and points of view.
Cusack is Mike Enslin a cynical and emotionally burnt out writer who has penned a number of best-sellers debunking haunted hotels and graveyards. With the recent death of his daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), he now believes in nothing.
The upscale Dolphin Hotel in New York refuses to let him stay overnight in their mysterious Room 1408, so his publisher (Shaloub) invokes an obscure law forcing the hostelry to give him access. The smooth hotel manager Gerald Olin (Jackson), in a marvel of shared atmospheric acting with Cusack, tries to talk the author out of it, but Enslin remains adamant.
Even when Olin tells him about the maid who was accidentally locked into the bathroom for a few minutes only to be found having gouged out her own eyes with scissors.
“It's an evil room,” says Olin.
As in The Shining, the room slowly begins to come to life. Is what is happening to Enslin, who has yet to come to terms with his daughter’s death, in his mind or are there malevolent supernatural powers loose in 1408?
1408 is one of the few recent horror films to generate a real creepiness which puts it into a category far above the recent spate of torture-porn films. There are moments when you really don’t want to be in that theatre with those images. The question is can the film sustain that level of unease and the answer is Yes! with only occasional lapses into over-the-top CGI effects.
Gabriel Yared’s eerie music with its rattles and sour notes is a plus as is the Dolby soundtrack with half-heard, whispered voices, children’s cries and even buzzing insects coming at you from all sides. Benoit Delhomme’s spooky but elegant camerawork builds skillfully using various color temperatures to play with our emotions.
Clocking in at an efficient 94 minutes, 1408 is a first-class effort all the way and the first genuine nightmare haunt to come along since Nicole Kidman got lost in that empty mansion in The Others.
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