Review of 1408

Warning, slight spoilers follow.

While I was back home this weekend, my brothers and I went to see 1408, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story. Growing up, I read anything that King published, and while I've not kept up in recent years, this story felt very familiar. Not in a bad way, but like talking to an old friend and being reminded of why you liked being around them.

The film fits better into the thriller genre, rather than horror. There's no blood and guts, and no cheap scares (like cats jumping out from behind things just when the music picks up). It's a "Mt. Pleasant movie", which is to say that I would watch it in the theaters back home, where I only pay $5 for a ticket and $2 for snacks, and I don't need hi-def, surround sound, etc. A movie like this also means you'll be dealing with a lot of puberty-addled kids that laugh at the wrong parts and don't understand the nature of movies.

So, back to the movie. John Cusack plays a writer that dismisses paranormal activitiy, mostly haunted hotels and the like. He discovers room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel, and is intrigued. The scenes with him and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the hotel manager, are entertaining, with each one trying to prove to the other about the merits (or lack thereof) of staying in the room.

What follows is a claustrophobic hour or so, as the room gets increasingly creepy. For fans of the Dark Tower, I feel that the room is a thinny, a place where time and space are thinner, allowing some of the more macabre elements of this world to come through. Cusack's character's daughter, who died young, begins to appear, first in home movies on the room's TV, then face to face. The scariest part of the film isn't scary at all, at least for the viewer. The moment she arrives, he loses her again, and then is told he would have to relive this moment again and again.

Cusack's performance is great, from sarcastic to skeptic to curious to crazy, it's a very fluid and realistic portrayal. The audience is never sure what is real and what is imagined. This is the thinking man's scary movie. It lingers. The places where you don't jump out of your seat plant themselves in your mind, waiting to remind you that there is little we have control over.

So, look for it at a cheap theater or on DVD. But don't miss it, it's a cool flick.