1408 (2007)

Based on a short story by horror legend Stephen King, 1408 stands tall against its recent horror genre peers. You see, 1408 is a different kind of horror film. While most films in the genre these days go for shock and terror by barraging viewers with violence, bloodshed and graphic anatomical gore, 1408 goes back to the roots of horror. The thing that drives this is simply the fear of the unknown.

John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a paranormal investigator who makes a living writing about haunted locations across the country. He himself is a skeptic and does not believe in ghosts or God, but has no issue with taking people’s money by writing his fantastical and false reviews and accounts of his stays in “haunted” places. One day he gets a postcard from a hotel in New York that simply advises him not to enter room 1408. Taking it as a challenge, he attempts to book the room but the hotel staff repeatedly attempt to block him from staying there for any amount of time.

Enslin confronts the hotel manager, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who also attempts to keep Enslin from staying in room 1408, but Enslin’s determination wins out in the end. Enslin is led up to 1408 personally by the hotel manager, who refuses to enter the room and leaves quickly. Enslin thinks this is all part of a ruse to excite him and get his mind running overtime before beginning his stay.

The freakiness begins almost immediately. At first the scares are innocuous enough to draw chuckles out of audiences. The room starts off with a few very basic and predictable happenings that have been used many a time. If they are clichés, then they are masterfully used clichés, because somehow we know that room is just warming up, playing games really. Such things would generally be freaky to us if they happened in real life, but seeing a skeptic who knows all the tricks try to rationalize what he is experiencing is darkly amusing.

Eventually, 1408 quits playing cutesy little scare games and unleashes its arsenal upon Enslin. The scariest thing about this is that neither Enslin nor the audience has any idea what this room is capable of. Having dispensed with the standard spooks, everyone is treading in dark, unknown waters. With serial killers, monsters and aliens it’s usually easy to figure out what will happen based on the conventions of their kind. A haunted room is not typical and there is no way of knowing what is coming next or whether or not we have seen everything the room can do to its victims.

Samuel L. Jackson’s character puts it best when he says “It is an evil f--king room.” Eventually Enslin stops trying to rationalize everything he’s experiencing and focuses solely on surviving, which proves to be a hellishly daunting task. The torments he faces are all disturbing, bizarre and virtually free from any gore. This film puts the adolescent torture-porn sub-genre that’s so popular these days to bed and focuses on mature thrills and chills.

The fear of the unknown is only part of this masterfully carried out film. Not knowing what the room is capable of is enhanced by what the room actually does. Everyone has been to a house or hotel that gives off a creepy vibe or their mind gets overactive when their alone in the house, so seeing a fairly unassuming looking room turn evil is doubly creepy. Instead of a dark and shadowy room with moldy carpet, stains on the tile floor in the bathroom and marks on the wall, 1408 just looks like an old hotel room. If it decided to leave you alone, you would have no idea that this room is pure evil.

The fear of the unknown along with the creepiness of evil being something all-too-familiar to us compounds in 1408 for some great moments. John Cusack really performs admirably as the sole star of the film. It is very difficult in film to isolate one character and keep him or her interesting, but Cusack performs deftly and really anchors the film. It is a vast departure from his normal work in films, and is more in the vein of his performance in Identity. His seeming normalness enhances the terror and he is very convincing.

While there are a few slow parts and some things don’t work as well as the filmmakers planned and hoped for, 1408 is a success. It provides old school chills that prove you don’t have to resort to gratuitous violence and relentless carnage to make people squirm. I hope the likes of Eli Roth and the folks behind the Saw franchise took notice, because genuine terror need not come from a knife or other sharp instrument. Sometimes the scariest things imaginable are just on the other side of a door.

1408 isn’t likely to put an end to the popularity of torture-porn films, but it does offer a ray of hope that horror films haven’t completely lost touch with their roots. Bravo.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5