Good haunted house films are hard to come by, but I still get excited about them when they come along. Recent ghost movies have ranged from lousy films like The Grudge and The Amityville Horror, to the terrible ones I have luckily avoided like White Noise and The Ring 2. With the modern obsession filmmakers have with CGI effects and jack-in-the-box scares, ghosts on screen have lost the allusive mystique that make them scary to begin with. But thanks to Mikael Hafstrom’s new spine chiller 1408, ghosts are scary again and probably the scariest they’ve ever been.
To this day, the scariest movie I have ever seen is The Blair Witch Project. I guess I fall into the category of people who are more afraid of what they can’t see on screen than what they can. As soon as they show the monster/ghost/alien/killer/creature I am relieved that it isn’t as scary as what my brain had come up with. Now 1408 doesn’t leave everything to your imagination, but it shares a common factor with Blair Witch in that they are both about people or a person trapped in an evil environment. In the same sense that the forest is the villain in The Blair Witch Project, so is the room 1408. What can be more frightening than a personified evil place?
The film starts with Mike Enslin (John Cusak) making his way through torrential downpour to stay overnight at a “haunted” hotel. He is a travel writer who writes stories about haunted places for a living. His current book is about haunted hotels and after all the cemeteries and bell towers he has visited, he is convinced that ghosts aren’t real. What makes Enslin such a fascinating character is his passion for finding proof of the existence of spirits, which he desperately yearns for. As we learn later in the film, Enslin only became intrigued with the afterlife following the death of his daughter. He wants to believe in the afterlife to find proof that his little girl still exists. I guess a visit to John Edwards wouldn't work for Enslin. His obsession with ghosts eventually led to the deterioration of his marriage and a turn towards alcohol.
Enslin was just about to give up on ghosts when he received a post card telling him not to enter room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel. Of course, Enslin is well versed in various hauntings and ready to go on this last mission. First he has to go through the hotel manager Mr. Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) who is determined to have him stay elsewhere. Jackson is terrific in his few scenes as he civilly attempts to warn Enslin of the dangers of room 1408. Not only have about twenty more people died in the room than Enslin had researched (the newspapers didn’t report the ‘natural deaths’), but one person drowned in their chicken soup and a maid who got locked in the bathroom cut out her own eyes. Enslin, who is convinced the room is nothing more than an elaborate myth perpetuated by the hotel employees, nonchalantly turns down Olin’s offers. Part of the genius of this set up is the casting of Samuel L. Jackson, who does his usual badass routine, but is himself so terrified of the room that he only goes on that floor once a month to turn down the room’s bed sheets. Before Enslin left for 1408, Olin let him know that the room isn’t haunted by a spirit or something Enslin would have encountered on the job by saying that 1408 is “an evil fucking room”.
Once Enslin enters the room the rest of the movie is essentially a one-man show and Cusack is remarkable throughout. Cusack did a wonderful job playing a man who journeys from having no faith in the afterlife to coming to the terrible realization that not only are there ghost, but he is trapped in an evil fucking room. Most of the shocks and thrills come from watching Cusack, as he convincingly plays horrified and desperate. I loved how the room slowly lets its presence know first in little ways like magically leaving chocolates on the bed pillows to sealing the only exit shut and manipulating the reality of the room. As Enslin endures various degrees of psychological terrors, we discover that the room operates by distorting your perceptions with nightmarish visions that are so terrifying you will kill yourself to escape the room’s torments.
When Enslin first enters the room, he says, “Hotels are naturally creepy places”. It seems that in the case of Hollywood they are. From Bates Motel to the Overlook, nothing good ever seems to come from staying at a hotel. I don’t know why hotels have such a terrible effect on sanity in films, but I’m glad they do. I am also glad that 1408 is another successful horror movie that deserves is honorary spot next to those scary hotels. So prepare yourself for a bumpy night, because 1408 is one creepy movie that is bound to give you a shocking good time.
B+
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