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Writer Mike Enslin makes his living from reviewing allegedly haunted hotels. After years of doing it he remains convinced that there is no such thing as ghosts. But then he receives a postcard warning him about room 1408 at The Dolphin Hotel in New York. He is loath to go back to a city plagued with memories, having lost his young daughter there so many years ago. At the same time he is intrigued and despite the manager's warnings about the fifty-six previous deaths in the room, he is determined to stay there. Apparently nobody lasts more than an hour and it isn't long before Mike discovers why…
Considering Mikael Håfström had such a promising start to his career in his native Sweden, it's surprising he hasn't fared better in Hollywood. After the disappointment of last year's "Derailed", I thought a return to straight horror might have yielded something more interesting. But he treats "1408" like an old-fashioned haunted house movie. The biggest problem is that he shoots as though he's on a limited budget, keeping locations to a minimum and failing to connect the dots between plot strands. He clearly doesn't care about his lead character because we aren't given the chance to get to know him before he's plunged into paranormal hell by his hotel room. There's a bit of a lead up to him going to the hotel. But it's more about his job as a haunted hotel reviewer and the grisly goings-on in the room than him as a person. There are too many montages and jump-cut scenes to allow you to get to know him on a personal level. Once he's in the suite, things go to hell in a hand-basket very quickly. There's no slow-build of psychological tension as the slight shifts in atmosphere force the character to question his sanity. The closest you get is him talking into his Dictaphone
about the room and the discovery of luminescent splatters under UV light that are accompanied by flashes of the bodies they related to.
There are lots of cheap loud + sudden = scary moments that simply aren't creepy enough because they are expected. The film is riddled with clichés; it opens with a stormy night, there are pointless shots of Enslin through a ceiling fan and howling winds at every available opportunity. Håfström's suggestions that everything is happening in Enslin's head are too clumsy, so we see flashes of the ordinary hotel room juxtaposed with what he is experiencing. The room takes on a sickly green caste that is meant to unsettle the viewer. But it isn't enough to give the film a "Turn of the Screw" psychological horror dimension. The lack of character development in the first two-thirds of the film and the sentimentality in the third act, means that anything meant to be emotional is instead melodramatic. In conjunction with the unoriginal script this makes the movie feel like a modern Hammer Horror movie, but without the imagination.
The screenplay by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski is based on a Stephen King story. Like most of King's "horror" stories that feature inanimate objects or places being possessed by the force of evil, this one feels hackneyed. Part of the problem is the jigsaw narrative - if you've seen the trailer you already know the reason Enslin is trying to find proof of life after death is because he lost his young daughter. But this isn't revealed in the film until about three quarters of the way through. So it's hard to empathise with him because the script paints him as a selfish, cynical misanthrope until that point. If the story were told in linear fashion, it would be easier to care about him. But it isn't, so you don't. He's too willing to believe the weird occurrences are paranormal and his descent into madness is too swift. Everyone else in the movie is a plot device, devoid of personality. Hotel manager Gerald Olin exists only to provide exposition about the room. Enslin's wife Lily is there only to suggest he has something to fight for and his dead daughter is merely a clumsy plot motor.
The pacing is uneven. The film starts slowly, showing Enslin's life as a writer, but it is generic series of scenes of him reviewing a hotel, doing a book signing and relaxing at his house in LA. The nearest we get to character development is seeing he has a drink problem. But that's just cinematic shorthand for a man with traumatic issues he can't deal with. A spot of surfing is an excuse for a clunky plot twist later on. But when he gets to The Dolphin, things accelerate. Too much happens too quickly, so you don't have time to absorb what's happening to the character or to calm down before the next thing goes bump in the night. However the lack of emotional involvement with the characters makes the film drag, feeling longer than ninety-four minutes. The dialogue relies on clunky exposition and lots of yelling in feigned madness. So naturalistic it is not.
I really like John Cusack, so I was hoping he'd rise above the movie and make Mike Enslin a likeable lead character. Sadly the paucity of the script is such that he doesn't have enough to build on. He goes from being tired and cynical to unconvincingly mad in the blink of an eye. Consequently there is no strong character arc and it's impossible to empathise with him. Cusack then lets the audience down by resorting to "crazy eyes" acting, instead of imbuing the role with a personality.
Samuel L Jackson's quality control continues to malfunction with the badly underwritten part of hotelier Gerald Olin. It's a role that only requires two of the actor's trademark modes; sternness and belligerence that combine to create a one-dimensional character. He is entirely lacking in presence or depth. Meanwhile Mary McCormack is robbed of the chance to do any acting as Mike's estranged wife Lily by a screenplay that treats her character as an afterthought.
The special effects work isn't strong enough to convince. You see ghosts of previous occupants wandering through the room and jumping out of the window. But they are shot as if on scratchy old film and in black and white or Technicolor depending on when they died. So they feel like they could easily be fake. They don't interact with John Cusack and those that do are poorly accomplished, like the unexplained axe-wielding madman or a dusty figure that chases him through the air ducts. Similarly there's a scene where Enslin finds himself outside on the window ledge, but you can tell it's just a cheap set. There are a couple of decent effects such as a melting telephone handset and the room tearing apart, but they are few and far between. Some supernatural goings-on feel like they are plagiarised from King's other stories. The bleeding walls and taps feel like a watered down version of the lift full of blood in "The Shining".
The music by Gabriel Yared is another aspect of the movie that feels as if it's been borrowed from a Hammer Horror film. It's the persistent use of twangy harpsichord that does it. You keep expecting Vincent Price or Peter Cushing to appear from nowhere with a demonic laugh. Yared throws in every musical horror movie cliché in the hopes some will have an effect. So we get the full gamut of rattling percussion, dark strings, rising brass, creepy synthesizers, music box chimes, melodramatic horns and creepy choruses in various combinations. But it's so predictable that it is in no way scary.
"1408" is a derivative haunted house movie that lacks imagination and finesse. There is nothing new or remotely frightening to be found here, unless you have a fear of clichés. The direction is pedestrian, the characterisation virtually non-existent and the writing hackneyed. Even the usually reliable John Cusack is disappointing (but not as much as the "And it was all a dream…but it wasn't…but it might be…" contrivances of the plot). If you want to see a film that makes hotels scary, go and see "The Shining".
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Production Year: 1980 - Horror - Director: Stanley Kubrick - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
Nov 4th, 2007
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