- Rating: PG-13
- Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes
- Production Budget: $25 million
- World-wide Box Office: $82, 687, 926 since opening day (source: Box Office Mojo)
Warning: Some spoilers are contained in this post.
Last Saturday, I wasn’t able to attend the Blogger’s Kapihan in Philippine Science high school because of my clinic duty. So to pass away time and while waiting for the post-blogger’s kapihan event, I decided to watch 1408 at TriNoma. I think it was my first time to watch a horror movie on my own since the movie, the Ring*. I didn’t think 1408 is as frightening as the Ring, but since it’s a Stephen King story and I do remember how, up to now, I’m still frightened thinking of Salem’s Lot, I pretty much thought I could handle well the fear and went to watch it.
1408 is a movie based on Stephen King’s short story with the same title, which is included in the collection of 14 dark tales, “Everything’s Eventual“. It’s a story of a writer, Mike Enslin (played by John Cusack), who despite not being able to experience supernatural phenomenon, still wrote books about haunted places. His search for more haunted places to visit led him to finding a hotel room in New York City with a reputation for having 56 deaths, both natural and questionable. The hotel’s manager, Gerald Olin (played by Samuel L. Jackson), tried all means to convince him not to rent the said room, saying that nobody lasts more than 1 hour in it. He even gave him access to documents regarding the deaths in 1408 and an exquisite and expensive bottle of cognac but still, Enslin insisted on staying. The room was unremarkable initially, but as the clock ticked and time passed, the room gradually revealed its true evil, playing with his own fears.
Did Mike Enslin last more than an hour in that room? How did he get out? How was he able to conquer the evil inside that room? What did he do that 56 other people did not realize that they must do in order to get out of that room alive?
But before those questions will be answered, let me first tell say that, though this is a horror movie, this will not scare you because of the gory scenes. Rather, it will scare you because of the psychological terror generated by the story.
It is especially scary if you think about those times that you checked in a hotel room on your own. Hotel rooms are meant to be very private and the means of communication with the hotel staff is through the phone. So, most of the time, you’re not really in touch with other people who’re in the same hotel and you’re left to the company of the room. Then you think of the number of people who spent their time there. Were they happy? Were they sad? What were they doing? Did someone die in that room? So, you see the very possibility, no matter how minute that is, that there was death in that room some time before you got there is enough to draw paranoia.
I think John Cusack gave a good performance in this movie. Considering that he probably got 50 minutes exposure in this film, out of 1 hour and 34 minutes, and mostly in scenes which he only interacts with objects (that may not be there) or just talking with himself, he must indeed pull a more than believable performance and capture the attention of the audience for a long time.
The room’s evil is not about itself, but rather, it feeds upon the fears and frustrations of its dwellers. In the case of Mike Enslin, he was terrorized by apparitions of those who died in the room, chased by a hideous monster in the air vents, and reminded by extraordinary means that he is forever trapped inside the room (disappearing rooms in the building’s floor plan, dropping temperatures with no way of fixing it, and his only way of communicating to the outside world, his laptop, hijacked by a doppelganger during his conversation with his ex-wife, Lily, played by Mary McCormack and destroyed by sprinklers in the room). And an alarm clock was set at “60:00″ and continually ticking down to zero.
More psychological stress was heaped upon Enslin when, after being unconscious after a flood that ensued inside the room, he woke up in a hospital near his home in L.A. with Lily and was convinced that all memories of being inside the haunted room were just disturbed dreams of someone who sustained a concussion due to a surfing accident. He lived his life, looking and wondering at how those memories weren’t true. One day however, he was at the post office, he recognized the employees as those from the hotel staff and suddenly these people destroyed the office, revealing walls and floors of 1408 underneath. He was still actually trapped inside 1408 and were only being fed visions of what his life would have been if he did not dare enter it.
The most stressful perhaps, for Mike Enslin, is when he saw his dead daughter, Gracie, inside the room with him, having her die again in his arms and crumble to dust. All of these are more than enough to drive him mad.
He did last more than an hour. However, the alarm clock resets for another 60 minutes.
So it seems there were only two ways by which he can proceed: to relive again and again the horrific 60 minutes or to take the “express checkout system”, which is the hangman’s noose. But he did not chose any of those two. He took his cognac and set the room on fire, which led to his rescue by firefighters and Lily. Perhaps, he got the idea of setting the room on fire from one of the inscriptions in the room that appeared when it got torn down: Burn Me Alive. Or perhaps his acceptance that there might be an afterlife after all destroyed the evil.
Did he really beat the evil in the room? I cannot say for sure. We do not even know if the idea for getting out of the room (Burn Me Alive) was noticed by other people who stayed there. The last line of Gerald Olin, “well done”, which he said while 1408 was burning and all the hotel employees and tenants were in panic, was cryptic. Could it be that he gave that cognac for that purpose? Was he, in some way, responsible for the existence of 1408? It leaves much to the imagination as to what he meant by his words and by his actions. And perhaps, it was better left that way.
However, I find the final scenes a bit lame, though I heard that it wasn’t the original ending that’s to be used in the film. For some reason, though, they had to change it. One motivation perhaps to buy the DVD, once it’s released, is that they’ll include the alternative ending there.
Overall, it’s a good movie: good set of actors and a great story. You can watch it alone or with a friend or a loved one. And I think it’s suggested that the original short story be read too. I’m going to hunt down that book. I think I want to be scared again, while I’m alone inside my room lying on my bed.
Footnote:
*I got so frightened with the movie the Ring because I watched it on its last full show on my own. I got back to my apartment very late and my roommates were already gone. When I turned on the hallway light, I heard the phone ringing. I ran quickly to the bedroom and slept with the bedroom lights on. Since then, I stopped watching horror movies on my own. 
