By Jeremiah Lewis
Someone should stop Stephen King from agreeing to let movies be made of his work. Unless it's a prison movie or a coming of age story. His horror seems difficult to translate well to the screen. While John Cusack does an admirable job of playing the cynical Mike Enslin, a writer who specializes in books about haunted locales, the script by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski feels lackluster, and Mikael Håfström's direction is unapologetically adolescent.
There are some great moments, to be sure--the setup in particular is forboding and intriguing--the idea of an evil sentient room capable of enacting on its victims something akin to a horror mind trip carries with it much potential, and the suspense of the first forty-five minutes or so is well carried out. The latter half of the movie becomes an exercise in stretching the bounds of reality, putting Cusack in psychological danger, if not mortal peril. But without a deeply compelling reason for doing so--the filmmakers ask us to sit through an hour of Cusack surviving a series of hallucinations, most of which are more unnerving than outright terrifying.
Mike Enslin is an alcoholic, jaded writer whose deep emotional scarring over his daughter's illness and death have him denying God and denying the supernatural. All this leads him to the Dolphin Hotel in New York and room 1408, in which 56 people have met their untimely demise. Enslin, determined to debunk the hyped superstition, finally convinces the hotel manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), to let him stay.
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John Cusack is Mike Enslin
All images copyright © 2006 Dimension Films (The Weinstein Company)
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The room's unearthly menace starts slowly--strange sounds, the occasional displaced object, electronic malfunction--have Enslin convinced Olin is playing tricks on him. But after he injures his hand in the window, Enslin tries to leave the room. That's when the room unleashes its fury.
Enslin is subject to a number of what appear to be hallucinations--visions of previous victims of the room committing suicide, a terrifying hook man attacking him in rapid-edit fashion. We're given flashes of images of blood, bizarre temperature fluctuations, and blood seeping from the bathroom sink. Enslin is not easily rattled, but when he realizes he can't escape the room, he becomes desperate.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers fail to really convey that desperation. We're never fully convinced it's not all in his head to begin with, which makes it less scary. Ultimately though, the film's flaws are in the direction. Håfström doesn't give much context to the room itself, and as a result, instead of feeling claustrophobic, the film feels more open and less menacing.
Tony Shaloub is wasted as Enslin's agent, with only a few lines that have very little to do with the main plot. Jackson and Cusack have a nice scene together, each playing off each other with veterans' ease. Cusack does suprisingly well playing the jaded Enslin falling deeper into madness and despair. He could have carried the entire film if it had a stronger ending. However, the sense of stuffy suspense it effectively builds in the opening half hour is diminished by a script that has nothing else to say and nowhere to go but down.
Jeremiah Lewis
This review also appears at Fringeblog
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