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List Price: $14.95 | | Label: Weinstein Company
Salesrank: 15938
Released: October 2, 2007 |
| Our Price: $6.99 |
| Used Price: $1.00 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
(Thriller) Based on a short story by Stephen King, a man who specializes in debunking the paranormal checks into the infamous room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel, only to discover… the terror is real.
Description of 1408 (Full Screen Edition):
As creepfests go, 1408 is right up there with The Shining, also inspired by a Stephen King work and featuring a menacing hotel and the wobbly sanity of a writer lodging there. "It's an evil [bleep]-ing room!" intones Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the smooth but vaguely sinister manager of the Dolphin Hotel. John Cusack is stellar as Mike Enslin, a cynical Everyschlub who writes "occult travel guides," but believes in nothing, especially anything resembling an afterlife.
What happens in room 1408 of the Dolphin may change Enslin forever--if he survives the first hour. The thrills range from jumpy "gotcha" moments involving mirror images, to more traditional horror fare like bleeding walls, to truly diabolical touches like the recurrence of the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." (Shudder.) The film does a nice job of weaving the operatic horror effects with the truly heart-breaking backstory of the death of Enslin's young daughter and his marriage--perhaps the only two things Enslin has ever believed in. And thankfully, there's just enough humor to leaven the intensity at key moments; Cusack is unparalleled when it comes to delivering a self-deprecating wisecrack, even as his life passes before his eyes. Get your adrenaline pumping and check into this room. Oh, and sorry, no refunds. A.T. Hurley
1408 (Full Screen Edition) Reviews:
Another hit of bad acid with Stephan King 
2009-12-15 - It's quick to draw you in, and it does fairly get under your skin in a kind of frustrating way, although it's not a seamless movie and you can feel the hand of the movie makers in it too much. Samuel Jackson wasn't convincing as the hotel manager in spite of his two words of French, and he gets more billing than he deserves as he must occupy about 15 minutes worth of movie time. Cusack wasn't bad. The chill factor is akin to the kind of drug paranoia associated with people who went off the deep end with LSD or some other such substance and never 'made it back' (Syd Barret?). Sixties child S. King's work has often been influenced by the psychedelic potential, which offers interesting possibilities for his novels and more so when left to the imagination rather than the screen. There are some decent visual moments in the film, but there are just as many others that simply feel like gaudy Hollywood manipulation. The premise of stepping into this room is that you are stepping into another dimension simutaneously - a dimension which doesn't follow the laws of logic, is bent on tormenting those who enter, and from which there is no escape, as it is hardly of this world in the first place. Charming, eh?
The film doesn't really compare with Kubrick's Shining. Yes, they were both Stephan King, yes they both take place in hotels. But where The Shining is a masterful work of art on all levels (story, acting, cinematography), 1408 is a kind of fast food by comparison, with a quick story, so-so character acting and more special effects than dynamite film work. It does leave a mark though as do so many of King's stories, tapping into a kind of primal paranoia. I give this film 3.5 stars, and maybe it deserved 4, but not 5. I'm going to watch the alternate ending on the second dvd now, which supposedly does away with the "happy ending" of the theater version on disc one.
Preview was better than movie.
2009-12-05 - I may not be a fair judge of this movie but most of the events in this movie seemed to far fetched. I liked the Shining alot but using that movie to rate this might not be fair?
I've seen better 
2009-11-17 - Got this through an old Pepsi Promotion for free and I'm glad I didn't pay for it. The basic idea was okay, but in the end, if you want a good class horror movie that takes place in a hotel, go for The Shining original, not the tv remake).
good, but could have been better 
2009-08-16 - I can't say I'm as thrilled with 1408 as most people.
The movie did an INCREDIBLE job in the beginning building up suspense that the hotel room the main character wanted to stay in was full of unexplainable evil, and had a dangerous history of countless deaths over the years of the previous visitors that stayed in the room. After all the convincing that the guy should NOT stay in the room from Samuel L. Jackson's character, I was anticipating what kind of danger this room would hold.
The creepy build up as the guy (who was a book writer by the way) was approaching the room while walking down the hotel hallway was quite good too, with an elevator opening by itself, and flies buzzing over the food on the plates that were sitting on a tray outside a hotel room. You could sense an enormous danger right around the corner.
Once the guy entered the room and started experiencing how insane the room really was, this is where the movie started to lose me... but only a little bit.
A nice twist having the Carpenters "We've Only Just Begun" constantly playing on the alarm clock radio, haha. I love that song. The history of the band itself was a tragedy, though I don't think the movie directors intended the band to be the focus of the storyline- it was just a random song they chose that was appropriate for the film because of the song title and the beautiful melody of the vocals worked REALLY work in this kind of uncomfortable setting.
Anyway, once the guy started getting comfortable inside the room (or rather, UNcomfortable) strange things began to happen.
Of course this is a horror movie, so the suspense started off slow and builded gradually. Once the guy realized something was terribly wrong (and arrogantly thought beforehand that NOTHING would happen to him) he started having hallucinations. It was a REAL challenge trying to figure out what was real and what was just the guys hallucinations creeping in. Of course the evil in the room was forcing the guy to have hallucinations quite often about his dead daughter and almost drowning in a ocean (and waking up near a beach) but it was REALLY confusing to me what was really happening and what wasn't.
I also feel the movie went a little too far with the creepiness and the hallucinations of the room. Come on, the ENTIRE room turns into a freezer suddenly as the guy almost freezes to death? The ENTIRE room floods with water as he almost drowns? It went WAY too far sometimes and the creepiness went away as a result.
1408 is quite entertaining as far as the action is concerned- one great scene right after another, and the film certainly LOOKS really good.
Well, the film does make more sense in its conclusion. I might give this movie a higher rating the second time I watch it, but as it is, it could have been a classic had some exaggerated scenes never taken place.
Enjoyable, but Pointless
2009-07-18 - 1408 is an interesting concept, a room so soaked with death and tragedy that it has become its own supernatural realm, presence, what-have-you. Unfortunately, for me, it falls flat in the execution therein.
John Cusack plays Mike Enslin, an author whose books are about demystifying places of supernatural mystery. Throughout the story, this motivation is explored, and lends the movie great purpose. Don't imagine a lot of screen time from others, it is primarily Cusack on the screen with the rest of the cast practically amounting to cameo appearances.
In this quest to demystify, he learns of "Room 1408" at a prestigious hotel. While in the room he comes face-to-face with the supernatural world and battles it constantly, trying to survive until a time-limit is reached (apparently no previous guests have lasted beyond a specific time interval, and while the movie implies that the ordeal will be over at this time, there is nothing shown or told that would make this any more than wishful thinking on Enslin's part.)
Unfortunately, the movie seems to be full of half-scares, half-creeps and half-finished ideas. There are plenty of freaky circumstances, lots of menacing ghoulies, but it never seems to reach a critical point. The movie can't seem to decide if it wants to be Japanese Horror (lonely horror, atmospheric, slow build with disturbing and discordant glimpses of dreadful things to come) or Western Horror (Terror and Gore thrown up to 11 to shock and scare the viewer) and as such the supernatural force comes across as (charitably put) unfocused. Does the force want to terrify Enslin? Does it want to kill him? Is there another motivation at work? This is all eventually explained, as a matter of fact, to offer a conclusion which, like the horror, is half-hearted in the end.
There are a few startling moments, nothing horrendous (certainly not as creepy / scary as Poltergeist, a movie 25 years its senior and superior in nearly every way.) and nothing ground-breaking. In all, it's worth a rental if you are looking for some time to fill with an OK film, but if you're looking for horror, there's much better and bigger game out there.
