VIEW FILM STILLS: 1408 READ MORE: A Room with a "Boo!"

PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 6/18/07)

It makes me feel a little decrepit to refer to a new horror movie based on a Stephen King story as "old-fashioned." But if one defines 1408 at least in part in terms of what it's not — and for one thing, it's the first horror movie I've seen in ages that's not only not a form of torture porn but acts as if the genre doesn't even exist — then sure enough, it's an old-fashioned horror movie. The potential quaintness doesn't end there, as the scares of 1408 are largely of the good-God-watch-out-behind-you or good-God-do-not-look-behind-you variety. Of course, even when King was first bringing a cheeky freshness to the genre, he had a certain respect for the verities.

Directed by Swedish-born helmer Håfström (whose last picture was the very unfortunate Derailed) from a script by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander, and Larry Karaszewski based on the King story that was first collected in his 2002 Everything's Eventual, 1408 is in part a one-man show for Cusack, who spends much of the movie alone battling with its titular hotel room. This supposedly evil room — a repository of death, most often in the form of grotesque suicide — is now off-limits to guests thanks to an edict from its tony hotel's manager, a mysterious figure played by Jackson in subtle intimidation mode. But Cusack's character, a hack writer whose subject is "haunted" hotels and inns, needs material, so he wheedles his way in, investigative tools and a ritualistic behind-the-ear cigarette in tow. Soon, a clock alarm blaring a Carpenters' song informs Cusack that he's got an hour before the room drives him completely insane.

And so the fun begins. The premise that the room itself and the inanimate objects in it all turn against its guest has as much comic potential as anything else; I could imagine said premise spun into wonderful Tatiesque slapstick. And when Hafstrom and the screenwriters overplay their hands, as in a bit of business involving a fax machine, the picture becomes risible. There's also the back story, involving the Cusack character's early promise as a writer and the family tragedy that sent him into his downward spiral, and, of course, led to his main problem which is that now he doesn't Believe In Anything, and, apparently, he has to Believe In Something if he wants to get out of his current mess.

For all that, the promised scares are for the most part delivered, and Cusack's a convincing, sympathetic victim-turned-fighter. While 1408 is no classic, it is refreshing to see a horror picture that just wants to do its job rather than prove to its audience how ruthlessly nihilistic it is.

— Glenn Kenny