A bit of a let down... but I guess I expected that.

Rating: 6/10 (29 August 2008)

I guess it's quite common for people to say that they liked the book better than the movie. I'm afraid I have to agree, even though it wasn't even a book, but a short story. I read the story quite a while before the movie came out, and wasn't surprised they'd try to make a movie out of it. After all it was probably the scariest freaking short story I ever read. But this isn't a book review.
I must say that if you have already read the story, and are hoping for something as spooky as that, well I'd say your going to be let down. Don't get me wrong, they made a decent piece of cinema here, and I feel it's a better attempt at horror than you tend to get these days. There is a good feeling of suspense that they manage to build up throughout the movie, and the psychological effects of the movie are quite well done. It does manage to make you feel a small bit of the insanity that is occurring in the film. It doesn't however manage to pull off the affect to the level which a reader of the story would be expecting, it never really reaches that peak you are expecting. It doesn't keep a steady buildup of suspense, it allows the suspense to fall off at parts, and for this movie, I feel that was a serious error in judgement.
Of course I never really expected a movie to be able to capture the same feeling as the story, so I wasn't really surprised. It just didn't seem like the kind of story that could be transferred to film. I must say that they did do a better job than I expected them to do, though. So kudos for that. And I must say that Cusack did do a good job acting in the movie, though I felt that the part of the hotel manager, played well by Samuel L. Jackson, wasn't given the proper amount of depth, and I feel his main scene should have been given a little longer screen time.
So in conclusion, those of you who have read the story and are looking for something to live up to it, don't get your hopes to high. However, if you haven't read the story and don't know exactly what to be expecting, then it should be a really good watch for you. I feel that having too high a level of standards set for this movie is what probably made it fall short for me.
All in all a decent movie, but I feel that with the raw material they had to work with in the original short story, the script writers could have done a much better job.