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| 1408 * * * |
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| Written by Ivan Radford |
| Friday, 31 August 2007 00:00 |
 Director: Mikael Håfström When you hear the word “horror” these days, you automatically think of slasher flicks and the recent wave of torture-porn. It seems a long time since Kubrick’s The Shining or that classic The Haunting (not the Catherine Zeta-Jones remake). Thankfully, with 1408, director Mikael Håfström brings us a deliciously old-school piece of horror. There are no serial killers here, no scenes of exploitative violence. Instead, we get one guy alone in a hotel room. Man versus building. Mike Enslin (Cusack) is a hack writer, who cruises reputedly haunted hotels to compile a book destined for bargain bins at airports. Along with his suitcase of electronic gizmos, Cusack carries some hefty emotional baggage: a dead daughter, a failed marriage, even a sick father. Of course, when he checks into room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel, it all comes with him. What a surprise. Things start simply enough, as all good horrors should, with a gradual build-up creating an underlying sense of unease. Times have changed though; rather than a black-and-white voice-over, we get Samuel L. Jackson as a spookily straight hotel manager. Instead of “This house is bad”, an equally immortal line: “It’s an evil fucking room”. But different doesn’t mean not scary: the radio incessantly plays The Carpenters (enough to send a shiver down anyone’s spine), chocolates appear on the pillows, and the evacuation plan of the building is eerily incomplete. The little things all begin to pile up, culminating in a flurry of special effects. Though impressive, the new-fangled visuals do dampen the taut tension of the more traditional opening. That, along with the insistent inclusion of Enslin’s family history, takes the edge off an otherwise chilling script. As the film draws to a close, it falls to the ever-brilliant John Cusack to carry proceedings along. Surrounded by frightening furniture for the night, his skeptical coolness is eventually eroded. It’s at this point that you realise: he really can act. VERDICT The camera sticks with Cusack throughout this one-man show. Luckily, his charisma covers up the screenplay’s shoddier moments, resulting in one hell of a shocking experience. A series of old-fashioned frights, 1408 is an antidote to today’s trashy remains of a once-fearsome genre. |
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