Not even close to The Shining

Rating: 5/10 (28 October 2007)

An unsuccessful writer (Cusack) releases a book about hotels that claim to be haunted. Of course, whenever he goes out to investigate those hauntings, he discovers that they're nothing but attempts of hotel owners to cash in on the story.
Also, the guy has a lot of personal issues, involving a deceased daughter and mentally ill father.
One day, he receives a postcard suggesting him to visit The Dolphin Hotel in New York, and stay in the room 1408. After some research he decides to check what the fuzz was all about.
Arriving at the hotel, he meets the manager (Jackson), who tries to persuade him from staying in the room. He explains that after numerous and unexplainable deaths he decided to close the room a while ago.
At this point, the plot seems a little childish, like in countless of horror movies where a group of kids in search of adventure decide to spend a night in an abandoned mansion, regardless the warnings of people at the nearby town, saying that they won't last a night.
But, let me tell you, childish or not, the manager's tales about the room were very persuasive. I myself wouldn't stay in that room after what he told. As you know, obviously, the writer decides the see for himself if the stories were true.
When he finally gets to the room, nothing happens for a while, which leads him to think that this was just another campfire horror story. But then, a series of events starts, and we see that the movie definitively began.
For most of the first half of the movie, you can see some mildly scary scenes. None of them are incredibly original, but they do an honest job bringing some tension to your room.
But at about the second half of the movie, it all goes down the drain. Everything you see is total non-sense. Scenes with no connection at all between one another. You begin to think that the authors had a few good ideas for initial 60 minutes, but simply couldn't figure out what to do for the rest of the movie. So they started to throw things that couldn't scare an eight years old.
Then, by the end of the movie, you get that awful plot turns that makes if you think: "man, what are they trying to save here? just pack things up and leave with the rest of your dignity".
The movie ends and you don't know what Samuel's roll really was, or if the room was evil or Cusack's character was just plain insane.