Decently entertaining up until the end, but then it just gets dumb

Rating: 5/10 (24 June 2007)

The least good film I've seen so far from 2007, but that's mostly because I've been lucky and have avoided things that looked particularly awful. In reality, 1408 is just mediocre. John Cusack stars and basically owns the screen for its 94 minutes as an author who writes about hauntings. He doesn't himself believe in the stuff he writes about, but is glad to fleece a gullible audience. But when he discovers room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, he has met his match. It is haunted, and apparently by a semi-talented Hollywood FX crew that doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "less is more". Hollywood just doesn't realize that loud effects are not especially scary. Ghost stories in particular are at their best when they're quiet and spooky. That said, much of the film falls into the category of a decent afternoon at the movies. Cusack, a favorite of mine, is very good throughout. The early scenes between him and Samuel L. Jackson, who has a rather tiny role as the manager of the hotel, are particularly good. The two play off each other perfectly (the best part of the movie comes later on when a tiny Sam Jackson appears in John Cusack's mini-bar  not meant to be funny, but it's hilarious). The haunting scenes happen too quickly and come on too heavily, but there are a couple of moments that made me jump. And there's a moderately clever mislead near the end of the film (which is obvious, especially if you've seen the trailer, but which works for the most part). But the climax and end are incredibly bad, ruining even the small amount of fun I had had. Before I finish, I have one complaint about something else that really bothered me: what the heck was with the digital ghosts? The ghosts look like some sort of digital holograms. How is this in any way frightening? It just looked odd.