There have been far worse King adaptations, for sure, but still a bit over-rated

Rating: 7/10 (6 September 2007)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a cynical writer who tries to debunk popular ghost stories and myths with his novels. But he has one more to crack- a room in an old New York hotel called 1408, which has been plagued with stories of murder, suicide and creepy happenings. The hotel owner Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) desperately tries to convince him not to go ahead with it, but Mike won't be satisfied until he's tried it for himself. To begin with, it all seems like he suspected, a big hoax, but then creepy happenings do begin, and he's confronted with events from his own past that drive him to the brink of insanity.
Stephen King sets a lot of his books in his home town of Bangor, Maine. Other fans of his work may not have noticed this, but I've always felt that this setting has added to the sense of creepiness and tension of his stories. But what's this??? New York??? Somehow, a hotel room in the Big Apple hasn't got quite the same impact as somewhere as enclosed as Maine. It's a great place to set a horror story. I myself have always felt a weird sense of tension if I stay alone overnight in an old hotel room in somewhere like Cornwall for some reason, but setting is everything and New York, well...
Cusack has received a lot of praise for his performance in the lead role, and he does try his best, even if his constantly being distracted by The Carpenters's We've Only Just Begun comically reminded me of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Other scenes that were meant to add to the scare factor, like his hand getting hit by a closing window and a tap bursting in his face, also lead to some unintentional amusement. Jackson is his usual steely, stern self in the supporting role and the rest of the supporting cast are also pretty good.
The first short story to be adapted from King's Everything's Eventual novel, this has a lot of good ideas floating around in it as well as some strong performances and a few neat scare scenes. But the story feels awfully disjointed and without a solid, firm foundation to hold your interest through-out and King's robbed it of his familiar, neat sense of claustrophobia by switching settings to somewhere so wide, colourful and populated. There are far, far worse adaptations of his work out there, of course, but of the few that get praise anything above pretty good, personally I didn't think this was one of them. ***