'Director's Cut'

Rating: 8/10 (17 August 2013)

One of the reasons I've never watched this before is because i thought it was some historical tale, surely, 'Room 1408' would have been a better title? But then I assume the Stephen King short story, upon which this is based, was simply called '1408'. Interestingly, the story originated as a device within King's autobiographical work, 'On Writing' to help explain story construction and as this film proceeds one becomes very aware of tragic background details of the main protagonist (and maybe King, himself). John Cusack does a very good job here, virtually carrying the bulk of the film himself. In some ways it is a shame because Samuel L Jackson is on such fine form that some extra scenes with him, possibly detailing some back story, might have been welcome. Even so this works surprisingly well and considering most of the film is set within a hotel room, the interest and suspense and intrigue are very well maintained. As well as discovering the origins of the film, after watching it, I also discovered afterwards that I had watched the 'Director's Cut' and that this is substantially different from the theatrical release both in length and in the ending. Now guess which one had the happy ending?