A hodge podge of cheap scare tactics. (spoilers)

Rating: 1/10 (9 September 2007)

'1408' is the latest hodge podge of cheap scare tactics. The kind that might make date-movie styled horror fans occasionally jump in their seat and scream in your ear, but disappoint audiences searching for a little depth and direction.
John Cusak plays a writer who's made a career of writing books describing his experiences of staying in rumored haunted hotels. Despite assurances by patrons and owners that ghosts roam the halls, there is little to make him a real believer in the paranormal. When he learns of the history of Room 1408 at the Overlook Hotel--no wait, I mean, Dolphin Hotel in New York City--he decides it would make the perfect closing chapter to his latest book. But, Samuel L. Jackson, playing the hotel owner, strongly attempts to dissuade his guest with narration of the atrocities that have occurred in theat room since the hotel's opening many years ago. The story is simple and we, as possible skeptics, must sit through Jackson's lengthy foreshadowing ramble.
In other words: be afraid! Be very afraid!
Of course, it would be easy to convince audiences that they've just paid to see an edge-of-the-seat thriller if it didn't take so long to build up to this point. And also, if what followed was a lot more than cheap "boos" that become so frequent and arbitrary that eventually, you might soon expect them. The temperature in the room changes automatically. The walls drip with blood. The fearless writer can't open the door, etc. And after nearly an hour and a half of delivering these to audiences promised big thrills, you might sit and hope that at least you can be wowed by the ending. With suspicions of dream sequences and other derivative time-wasters, even that fails to quell our doubts that before the movie is over, we might finally have something to make the movie a little less than completely forgettable.
Despite grand performances (as always) by Cusak, who essentially is the entire film, most everyone else of note is wasted (i.e. Samuel L. Jackson) in insignificant minor roles. The true mystery here is how this movie received such a high viewer rating. Ballot-stuffing ghosts?