"1408" (2007) - Movie Review

I am not a big fan of horror movies. Or to be precise the horror tag these days the movies carry along. Disgusting images with gory torturous schemes does not interest me or rather kind of question the sense of remaining human. Every one has a wicked crooked character inside, but the movies now a days instead of dealing with it, exposes it for guilty filled piece of hate. The trailer of “1408” and some good ratings in IMDB interested me. Added to that the “PG-13” rating encouraged and assured that may be it is different from the flicks I am talking about. After watching, I can gladly say that it did not contain any gory disgusting images. Thanks to the Swedish director Mikael Håfström for that. And also thanks to nice racy thriller from Stephen King who wrote this as a short story and the movie got developed from it. But of course as a movie it could have been a little more even though the whole period of 94 minutes is gripping.

Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a writer who does it as a job to stay at the most haunted places. He then writes books about it. He wants it in and out, instantly. A postcard with the Dolphin Hotel ad and printed line of “Don’t enter 1408” is more than enough for Mike to head New York from Los Angeles. After careful explanation and lot of glossy bribery articles from the Manager of the Dolphin Hotel Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) to not enter the room, Mike still goes for it, as expected. Then the room becomes alive. It sets a mark of sixty minutes in the old alarm clock counting down the stay of Mike. For Mike, all the time and in all the haunted places, he never encountered a “ghost”. When terror hits him in the room, initially he goes berserk. He does not know how to react. But slowly he comes to his senses and thinks very cautiously to get a real thing out of it. Even at that moment, he feels it seems the work of a set up. He believes the drink he took offered by Gerald has something to do with it. But when a real life instance of his shows up in television, involving his dead daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), it is more than hallucination.

What I liked about the movie is the way they took the time to settle up on how Mike is. The initial scene where he is so fast to enter the haunted room and the approach of his in a methodical way sets up on his belief and how ready he is for anything. Even the boldest one would flinch or jump out when there is sudden movement. Mike jumps and freaks out but at the same time he thinks. He realizes the possible genuine way to get out. It is not a lonely young extremely hot female entering alone with a pen knife towards the darkest room possible in dead black night. The room is normal but still there is breath of air filled with creepiness. Being normal in a movie like this is out of normal. This form of projection definitely adds up the nice scary moments expected and going away in a fraction of a second.

In most horror movies, when some one gets stuck in a room or may be in a situation, as a viewer we start to think of escaping methods. Like say, shouting out loud or banging the door or may be jump out of the window. I mean anything is everything in that instance. Still in those movies, the attempt will be terrible with known results. Mike tries to get away by all means possible. Even being a great hunter of ghosts even though he never encountered one, he is no more curious about the place. He does everything possible to get the “hell” out of the room. And in fact in everyone’s mind the question arises, when the room can do the most frantic and terrorizing thing possible, why cannot it just kill him? Mike asks that too and the response is funny and covers the base well enough for a thriller/horror movie. It is not clever but good.

John Cusack has this curious look and conceived likeability in all the characters he does. He is instantly friendly but creates an unknown distance from the viewers. Any character he does, it has been like that. Some where even when he is up close talking right at your face, you still do not know the character he is playing in depth. This has always helped in most of his movies with that likeable detachment. Mike in “1408” is a lonely but busy man trying to explain himself the tragedy he went through. He wants an end and does not want the pain to elongate further. So along with the terror outside, he consistently battles the hopeful or hopeless emotion inside.

For the flip side, this movie does not offer anything new or out of the “1408” (sorry could not help it) experience. Every end is not exactly the end in a movie like this. Hence we easily identify many of those. But it definitely keeps everyone riveted to the seats with nice little conversations of Cusack to the room and the phone voice conveying deadly messages with etiquette. Refreshing movie to watch for in this genre.