Scan and Pan
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
1408
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a writer who cynically produces best sellers about hauntings even though he doesn't believe in the supernatural. After he learns about an allegedly haunted hotel room in New York City, he's determined to write about it. When he arrives, the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson) stubbornly refuses to let him stay in room 1408, warning that no one lasts more than an hour and 56 people have died in the room. Mike finally persuades the manager to let him stay overnight in the room, a room that looks normal on first glance but Mike soon learns that first impressions can be very wrong.
Mikael Håfström, a Swedish director whose 2003 drama Ondskan was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, crafts a stylish film where the scares are generated by psychological tension and unexplained events rather than from overt violence and gore. Most of the film takes place in a hotel room, yet Håfström continually finds ways to make it interesting to the viewer. The screenplay by Matt Greenberg (Halloween: H20) and writing team Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood) is generally faithful to King's short story while expanding the backstory of the main character and balancing horror with a surprisingly sly wit. At times, it verges on being a subversive dark comedy.
Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (Sade) and production designer Andrew Laws (The Number 23) achieve the seemingly impossible by making a brightly lit room as disturbing as any wrapped in shadows. The score by Gabriel Yared (The Lives of Others) is suitably creepy without being too obvious.
Cusack is excellent as the cynical writer who begins to question his own sanity as he faces the strange occurrences in room 1408, selling the audience on the story's reality by sinking his teeth into his character and never letting go. Jackson's role is only a small one, but he's masterful as the charming hotel manager who's willing to do anything to prevent Mike from staying in the room. Leave it to Jackson to take a role that exists primarily for exposition and make it a memorable one. Good performances also come from Mary McCormack as Mike's estranged wife, Jasmine Jessica Anthony as their daughter, and Tony Shalhoub as Mike's editor.
Blessed with some top notch acting and a director who gets great mileage out of a limited setting, 1408 is one of the best Stephen King adaptations in a very long time and an entertaining horror film that's refreshingly back to basics.
[4 out of 5 stars]
ased on a Stephen King story, this is a good old-fashioned throwback to The Uninvited, The Haunting, and, yes, even The Shining, haunted house/hotel films that generate chills by creating an evocative atmosphere that gets inside your head even before anything goes bump in the night.
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a writer who cynically produces best sellers about hauntings even though he doesn't believe in the supernatural. After he learns about an allegedly haunted hotel room in New York City, he's determined to write about it. When he arrives, the hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson) stubbornly refuses to let him stay in room 1408, warning that no one lasts more than an hour and 56 people have died in the room. Mike finally persuades the manager to let him stay overnight in the room, a room that looks normal on first glance but Mike soon learns that first impressions can be very wrong.
Mikael Håfström, a Swedish director whose 2003 drama Ondskan was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, crafts a stylish film where the scares are generated by psychological tension and unexplained events rather than from overt violence and gore. Most of the film takes place in a hotel room, yet Håfström continually finds ways to make it interesting to the viewer. The screenplay by Matt Greenberg (Halloween: H20) and writing team Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood) is generally faithful to King's short story while expanding the backstory of the main character and balancing horror with a surprisingly sly wit. At times, it verges on being a subversive dark comedy.
Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (Sade) and production designer Andrew Laws (The Number 23) achieve the seemingly impossible by making a brightly lit room as disturbing as any wrapped in shadows. The score by Gabriel Yared (The Lives of Others) is suitably creepy without being too obvious.
Cusack is excellent as the cynical writer who begins to question his own sanity as he faces the strange occurrences in room 1408, selling the audience on the story's reality by sinking his teeth into his character and never letting go. Jackson's role is only a small one, but he's masterful as the charming hotel manager who's willing to do anything to prevent Mike from staying in the room. Leave it to Jackson to take a role that exists primarily for exposition and make it a memorable one. Good performances also come from Mary McCormack as Mike's estranged wife, Jasmine Jessica Anthony as their daughter, and Tony Shalhoub as Mike's editor.
Blessed with some top notch acting and a director who gets great mileage out of a limited setting, 1408 is one of the best Stephen King adaptations in a very long time and an entertaining horror film that's refreshingly back to basics.
[4 out of 5 stars]
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