Shaken, not stirred

>> Stephen King adaptation 1408 is creepy
but doesn’t have much impact

by MATTHEW HAYS

Walking into a film based on a Stephen King story is one gigantic crap shoot. While you could sit through a Shining, Carrie or Dead Zone, the statistical odds are you’re going to see something closer to a cultural crime along the lines of Thinner or Maximum Overdrive.

1408 has the right cast. The excellent John Cusack plays a travel writer who specializes in assessing haunted spots. Not a believer, he goes in and debunks them while writing witty, acerbic articles and books on spooky places. He receives a postcard suggesting that he investigate room 1408 in a New York hotel, and he decides he must check this place out.

In the best bit of the entire film, the also-excellent Samuel L. Jackson plays the hotel’s manager, who tries to convince Cusack not to go into room 1408! He begs, pleads and grovels with Cusack—he even tries to bribe him with booze—not to stay in that room. (It kinda makes you wonder why they don’t just shut down the room, but then they wouldn’t have a movie, I suppose.)

When he’s in the room, any and all manner of creepy things begin to happen. Blood coming out of the walls, melting phones, windows slamming on hands, ghosts throwing themselves out of windows (if they’re already dead, why are they committing suicide?), you know—all the things that happen when vacations go terribly wrong.

This can give audiences the creeps, and telling by the gasps I heard at the press screening I attended, some journalists (though we’re by no means the brightest group of people, so perhaps you shouldn’t judge by us) were finding 1408 rather shocking. Trouble is, while the movie has some great visual flourishes and a few nifty tricks here and there, it doesn’t have much cumulative impact. There’s no great a-ha! moment, when all those spooky bits and pieces finally add up to a shocking whole. It makes sense that it’s based on one of King’s short stories, because 1408 felt like it was stretched far, far too thin.

1408 opens This Friday, June 22

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