Typical Stephen King story

Rating: 3/10 (30 April 2009)

When I caught this movie on TV I didn't know it was a Stephen King adaptation but I should've realized right away because it had all the typical King trademarks: plot devices that make no sense, no character development, major characters that disappear halfway through without explanation, and unsatisfying dead ends.
John Cusack, a writer, gets invited to stay in a haunted hotel room. The hotel manager, Samuel L. Jackson, could be God or he could be Satan, it is never made clear which, probably because Mr. King didn't know himself.
The film's complete title should be "1408, or How To Trash A Hotel Room In 60 Minutes Or Less". I was constantly distracted by how many furnishings got broken in the course of a one-hour stay by Cusack's character. At least the other room inhabitants, the ones who gouged their own eyes out or jumped out of the window, had the decency to leave the room and its furniture intact and only destroy themselves.
A woman with an old-fashioned baby carriage is entering another room just as Cusack enters his. Who is she? Who cares? The thermostat in the room is broken. Why is it stuck at 80 degrees? Who knows? Cusack finds that he is trapped inside the room because the door is locked. It was at this point I found myself yelling at the television, "Take the %#@*& hinges apart you &%$#@* idiot!" Is Cusack dead? Is he in Hell? Purgatory? Why? His daughter died but he didn't kill her, she died of an illness, so why should he be punished this way? Because he left his wife when he couldn't deal with the child's death? Even the meanest nun will admit that's not a reason to suffer eternal damnation.
He sees ghosts of other people who killed themselves in room 1408. Is his hour of suffering overlapping theirs? Does everyone get the same hour in which to suffer? Is that why he sees these people whenever he is outside the hotel room? And why does he only see a couple of the other victims? Why not all 56 of them? And what ever happened to Samuel L. Jackson's character? Why does he show up only inside the mini-bar and never anywhere else? The list of unanswered questions goes on and on, and so does the trashing of room 1408, and it was all just too much for me. I understand the story developed out of an outline Mr. King was making to teach students how to write novels; I pray to The Almighty that none of those students took his advice.