Solid Horror Flick

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2016)

1408 is a movie that relies much more on old-school scares than what you see in most horror films these days. It's a movie that relies on deep psychological horror and building tension rather than cheap and unnecessary, ineffective jump scares. This is something I love about 1408.
The movie follows Mike Enslin, a not so successful writer that writes about "haunted" hotels, rooms, cemeteries and such. What is interesting about his character is the fact that he is a skeptic. He has never seen anything to make him believe in ghosts or in the paranormal. Interestingly though, this was also kind of a flaw for me, because it does make the character more interesting, but at the same time it sets up the later events of the film a little too perfect for me. Even if you knew nothing about the plot of this film, within the first 5 minutes of it you would know exactly where it's going, so it makes the movie predictable. You know the character will undergo some kind of cathartic situation that will make him change his mind, which is great, but predictable.
Performance-wise, John Cusack as Enslin is good, nothing outstanding but he does get the job done. Samuel L. Jackson is also in the film as the hotel manager. I thought he was miscast. The fact that he's Sam Jackson and knowing his roles of the past distracted me, however he does a great job with the material he is given.
The build up to the room and the first few minutes in the room are brilliant. Definitely the best parts of the movie, because the tension is great. After the first few minutes in the room, the movie does, unfortunately, slow down and begins to roll downhill. The tension starts to fade away and the movie feels way too slow, even a little boring at times. It does pick up the pace at times and regain speed, but those scenes that are slow do take you out of the movie.
There are certain things in 1408 that also make no sense: If it's established early in the film by Samuel L. Jackson that electronics do not function in 1408, why is there a TV and a radio in there and why do they work even before things start to escalate? Just don't say electronics don't work in the room and it would have worked fine. At a point in the film, Enslin starts to see like TV projections of the people that killed themselves. We see this woman jump out of the window and kill herself. Then, when Enslin climbs out of the window and tries to get back in, the same projection tries to kill him, although we did see her every move before and she definitely did not try to kill anyone. If the room is so smart and evil and even turns on the water sprinklers at one point to wreck Enslin's laptop, how come it didn't notice his intentions when he wanted to literally burn the room and start sprinkling away? Like I said, Sam Jackson does the best he can with the material, but some of his lines are just retarded. Like when he says "It's an evil f'ing room". Also the electronics situation which is just not true. But the worst one is at the end when he's just sitting in his room with a cigar and his glass of scotch and says "Well done Mr. Enslin, well done." or something like that. Welcome to schlock town. Why is Enslin's first book even mentioned at the beginning of the film if it has no payoff whatsoever. Great setup for something but absolutely no payoff. Are we supposed to interpret that he started writing his horror books after his daughter died? It's never really explained or made clear at which point in his life he started writing the books. The things with the daughter were interesting, it gave the character depth and stuff the room could mess around with to alter him. But what's up with his dad? He's in one scene and it's never mentioned ever again.
In the end, 1408 is a flawed movie, sure. But the flaws I have with it are almost exclusively with the script. But I can't deny the fact that it's a well made movie. I love how it starts to build tension and there are absolutely no stupid cheap jump scares in the movie. Almost no blood, the movie is almost purely psychological. It's a solid horror movie, an entertaining one and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who can appreciate a good psychological horror movie.
7.0/10