Do not stay at a Midtown hotel

Rating: 8/10 (22 July 2007)

Four years ago in 2003 John Cusack starred in a movie about a murder motel where one person after another kept getting killed. In retrospect that may have been more fun to watch than his new one, '1408,' a claustrophobic psychological thriller about a doomed and horrible hotel room in Manhattan where Cusack's character is trapped and tormented all alone. The 2003 movie was called 'Identity,' and its payoff was very far-fetched. But it had Rebecca De Mornay, Alfred Molina, Gary Busey's son Jake, Ray Liotta, and Amanda Peet. In room 1408 there is only John Cusack and his demons. And a lot of special effects. Samuel L. Jackson is downstairs in a hotel manager's monkey suit, out of reach.
'1408' originated as a short story from the fevered imagination of Stephen King, whose plots often have a reflexive, boxes-within-boxes aspect. It concerns a writer who does books disproving that various locations are magical or haunted. One reviewer calls these "paranormal guidebooks," but the point is he's a rationalist. He thinks he can stay in any haunted rooms without fear because he doesn't believe in ghosts; then he can write about them glibly and entertainingly. Though his aim is to debunk, his books are good for the hostelries' or haunted sites' business and they do a good business for themselves, though he's just a skilled hack and his latest reading is attended by under half a dozen people. What we learn later is that he is haunted himself by the death of a young daughter, and he ran out on his bereaved wife some time back.
Someone tips off Cusack's character, whose name is Mike Enslin, that he should not enter room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel in midtown Manhattan. He decides that this is the perfect finale for his latest book, Ten Nights in Haunted Hotel Rooms. So room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel is where Enslin goes and where the action takes place. The hotel has turned down his request to stay in this room. He has used a lawyer and agent to force them to agree. When he arrives he is shunted to the office of the manager, Mr. Olin (Jackson), who repeats the history of the room to him and urges him not to enter it. No one has emerged alive from a night in it.
'1408' has been compared to Kubrick's film of 'The Shining,' because both stories are about writers shut up somewhere so claustrophobic it drives them nuts. But with all due respect to the director Mikael Håfström, he's no Kubrick.
In a story like this it's necessary to follow all the signals and suspend disbelief. But puzzles will remain. Supposing there were a hotel room like this where dozens of people had died of both natural and unnatural causes, chiefly suicide. Supposing all that were true. Why then would the hotel maintain the room in working order? If people have been dying horribly here since 1913, and an electrician as we see later refuses even to step into it, how come it has a working TV and clock radio, fully stocked bar, well made bed, up to date plumbing, and so forth? Why not just shut it down? Ostensibly, we're told, because hotels don't like to admit to bad luck just as they don't like to acknowledge having a thirteenth floor.
Let us go back to the fact that this comes from a short story, and note that the original master of such tales was Edgar Allen Poe. In them, the protagonist has some horrific experience, and then discovers--what? That there was some reasonable explanation? That it was a dream? Or not? The irony is that Stephen King invents a writer who debunks the kind of story he banks his own reputation on, and then gives him a very,very hard time, as one would stick pins in a voodoo doll. But due to the loyalty of the society of scriveners, he lets Enslin off in the end. Or does he? If 1408 comes close to being a superior example of the old fashioned kind of scary movie--not the ramped-up youthful gore-fest that now proliferates but an evisceration-free bit of teasing mental torture--it's because Mr. Håfström is a decent director; but most of all it's because John Cusack is a fine actor, who is capable of making his emotions seem real to us. And though '1408' is very much less pleasant to watch than the haunted murder-fest of Cusack's 2003 'Identity,' it's also arguably a piece with more class---because it's a mind game, not just a scare-filled whodunit.
The trouble with the making of '1408' was that even if $25 million isn't a big budget for Hollywood, it will buy you a lot of special effects if you're just working in a couple of rooms; and at some point the special effects grab the stage from Cusack: the hotel room is flooded or frozen over with snow or crumbling to pieces and covered with plaster dust. You're not inside Mike Enslin's head any more so much as you are simply on a film set the F/X people are having a ball with. It's a relief to be reminded that it's just a movie and you can get off the edge of your seat. But that's not what's supposed to happen, of course. You're supposed to stay on the edge till the end. Seeing John Cusack in this kind of movie makes me miss those great youth pictures of the Eighties in which he was a key participant. He's still a terrific actor, with greatly more well-developed chops. But he's in a losing battle with the plaster and fake snow, and that's a shame.