More hammer lady, less dead girl

Rating: 1/10 (28 July 2007)

I don't see what everyone liked about this movie. The set-up was too long and talky, and when it was done, the main character remained as flat and opaque as he had been in the first scene. After the film finally got Cusack into the eponymous hotel room, I had to wonder, well, what's going to happen here for the next hour or so to keep me engaged. The answer: not much, just John Cusack having a long, drawn-out, mental breakdown.
Maybe if the Cusack character had more depth . . maybe if his freak-out were a more thorough reworking of his everyday life . . . maybe if the film had either better developed its half-baked themes about loss and faith or had not tacked them on in the first place . . . maybe if the film had made a choice to be either psychological horror or thrill-ride horror and had fully embraced one of these styles . . . I dunno. All I do know is that I saw this movie with two other horror buffs and none of us much liked it.
Except for the disquieting episode on the hotel ledge, the alarming crazy lady with the hammer, and the so-stupid-it-was-fun crypt keeper in the air duct, all three of which account for no more than five minutes of screen time, this film was a bore.
By the way, this story seems to steal ideas from The Shining and use them here to much less powerful effect. Is Stephen King now reduced to stealing ideas from himself?