I’m not sure about seeing the movie - “1408” is, for me, a truly creepy story that really gets inside my head, and I don’t know about seeing a movie like that. Of course, the movie might be easier to take than the book, since all the scary stuff in the book is provided by my own mind to start with.
I thought it was a pretty good movie. There were some odd boogie men that just jumped out at you, but overall it was just incredibly freaky. When the…
Clock reset and the music started playing again and again that freaked me out. What freaked me out even more was when the guy across the street just mimicked what Cusack was doing.
Definitely worth seeing, but probably not a classic.
I’m sorry but this movie really sucked. I didn’t even go in with high expectations expecting a good creepy moody thriller like The Shining or The Others and would have been happy if it was just a decent popcorn horror flick. It wasn’t.
Creepy? please.
If you were creeped out when Bill Murray’s clock radio came on for a second day in a row playing “I got you babe” well then I guess you creep out pretty easily.
There were a few nice jump out of your seat moments when a ghost slasher popped in suddenly to say hello a few times but other than that I guess a room that gets hot then cold, shakes, cracks, a dumps water on you with a lot of special effects is supposed to be scary.
A less is more approach in the fright department would have been nice.
And as far as stories go there really wasn’t one. He had some daddy issue that they never addressed or resolved. mmm, okay? Same with the daughter.
I don’t even think I could recommend it on DVD.
Mild spoilers below. Consider yourself warned. Apart from what I put in the box they really don’t seem big enough to really, well, spoil anything.
I admit I mostly have bad taste in horror (I loved Ghost Ship. And I thought House on Haunted Hill was seriously creepy. In my defense, I also loved Into the Mouth of Madness).
Still, I found 1408 decidedly creepy. I really liked it, probably because I love haunted-house style horror where the protagonist(s) are trapped in a room/house/boat/etc and cannot escape. The first part of the movie is integral to making the rest of this happen – it puts the audience in a very very normal place. We know, logically, that horrible creepy things are going to happen. But John Cusack is the audience: he doesn’t seriously believe in ghosts and ghouls and the like. He’s seen a lot of this.
See, I’ve stayed in ‘haunted’ hotels. I even worked in a purportedly haunted bed and breakfast. I’ve never had anything seriously inexplicable happen, just like Enslin. The radio? Justifiable – that’d be an easy trick to do for someone with electronics knowledge. The chocolates and the folded toilet paper? Someone got in and out silently. There’s just a secret panel or something. That window is just old. The hallucinations are just from drugged alcohol…
[spoiler]…but eventually it becomes completely impossible to believe that this is as simple as a hallucination. The fact that there’s no reason, no resolution, is particularly chilling. There’s no ghost to put to rest or secret incantation to mutter. The only way out is to die, and even that probably just ties you to the room forever to harass new people. The only way out – assuming Enslin got out – is to get the door opened from the outside.
The guy creeping through the ducts, incidentally, looked a lot like the first guy who died in there. Did you see the round specs? Alternately he’s just someone who crawled into the ducts to die.
[/spoiler]
As for the daddy issue…
It seemed apparent to me. Enslin did not have the best relationship with his father. The old ghostly bastard seemed pretty creepy and was agreed upon to be a big ol’ dick by everyone who read the (obviously autobiographical) first book Enslin wrote. When the guy got old and infirm, Enslin packed him off to a shitty-ass nursing home where the guy barely ever saw sunlight or anything but the four walls of his sterile room. Enslin felt guilt about this mixed with the bitterness he had toward the old man.
No, none of this is actually stated. It’s more implied.
I loved when the father said, “As you are I once was, as I am you will be.” It reminded me of an old painting from the middle ages that had a group of young nobles find three caskets. One freshly dead, the other decomposing, and the third a skeleton. They say that line I mentioned above and it really freaked out the nobles because they are so beautiful and rich etc, and the thought that no matter what they did they would be like what they saw was disturbing. Or something. I’m a dork.
So how does the movie handle the creepy repeated numbers on the phone? I gots to know.
It wasn’t as creepy as I hoped it would be, and the voice didn’t do the whole list of numbers. I was also disappointed that they didn’t have the painting with the woman on the stairs.
Overall, I thought it was alright. I could have done without the dead daughter storyline, but I guess they had to flesh out his character somehow. I didn’t buy SLJ as Olin, he seemed aggressive, not polished and courteous.
Not disappointed I saw it, could have waited for the rental.
What I did not enjoy: The gaggle of teeny bippers that infested the theatre and would not keep quiet.
What I did enjoy: Just about everything else. Cusak is one my favorites. I loved the bit of him trying to get the attention of the guy across the street.
What I thought was unique it had a body count of zero. there were no deaths in the present time of the film. all the deaths were in the past…and none were actually shown dying. and it was still scary.
I know I’m a couple months behind, but I finally saw this at the dollar theater here. I’m a big King fan, and I liked, but didn’t love the story. But I really, really liked the movie. I thought it was better than the book.
I loved the fact that it was much more about what would drive a person to commit suicide than BOO!!! look out behind you. I found the movie to have a fantastic balance between startling the audience, creeping out the audience, and character development. I loved the addition of the daughter, as well as the less emphasis on the spooky paintings and bizarre happenings.
Cusack did a fantastic job in the movie, the twists were great I especially liked the time when he “escaped” the room and was in the restaurant with his wife. The parallels with Misery were a great touch, and sold me on the belief that he had escaped, only to be dragged back in, and I liked the ending too.
In case you couldn’t figure it out, I really liked this movie.