Enjoy Your Stay

This evening, I went to see Stephen King's newest movie, about an "evil fucking room" in an old hotel: 1408. And though not quite a "five star experience," there was certainly much to commend about the movie.

First and foremost, the movie does what very few horror movies do successfully -- it manages to generate moments of genuine tension without relying on gore and cheap scare tactics. (The movie does have some of the latter, but laudably, none of the former.) I was never quite as unsettled as I was, say, watching The Ring for the first time, but that isn't necessarily a mark I'm asking every scary movie to meet.

Secondly, the key bits of casting are outstanding. John Cusack is remarkable. The movie is just one notch shy of being a "one man show," and they found "one man" very capable of the performance. This movie simply wouldn't work without him. Samuel Jackson also delivers in the way he always has throughout his career, taking a small character role and knocking it out of the park.

Thirdly, though the film stumbles just a bit in the third act, it ultimately reaches the right ending. And I don't use that phrase lightly here. As I was starting to get just a little restless in the final 20 minutes or so, I was suddenly struck with the thought, "there is no good ending for this story." You've got a great set-up ("Skeptic gets trapped in an evil, haunted hotel room; scare-larity ensues"), but no real prospects for a satisfying ending. Yet then, from out of the woods, an option I had not anticipated appeared, and when it did, I found myself saying, "yes, that's actually the only way you could end this story well."

And I must note that I've been told it was not the ending of the original short story.

Which brings me to the one strike against the film, in my mind. It's front-loaded with a bunch of Stephen King cliches that I found as annoying as ever. The history of the hotel room in question is just a little too over the top to be properly unsettling. 56 people died in there? And only after number 56 did someone get the bright idea to just close up the room and stop letting people stay there? Was there nothing appropriately disquieting about deaths 10 through 55 to give past hotel managers pause?

As expected, the lead character of the story is a writer. I know they say "write what you know," but Stephen King always seems to fall back on a writer as his stock Everyman, apparently oblivious to fact that few of us know what it's like to publish multiple bestselling books. This time, the main character's initials even spell it out for you: Mike Enslin. ME. Really subtle there. And I would have found it unrelatable as usual, were it not for John Cusack's solid performance.

But most cloying of all is the way Stephen King continues to believe that pop music is scary. I think every single story he's ever written has prominently featured some song in a repetitive manner. This time, we're supposed to be filled with a sense of dread every time we hear The Carpenters. I'll bypass the opportunity for a low joke there and simply say, nuh-unh. Not scary.

Fortunately, these problems are really just minor details that tarnish the opening act of the movie. The rest of the set-up, and the bulk of what follows, really rises above those problems. I rate the movie a B+. And I hope that more horror films of this type start appearing to kick the so-called "torture porn" genre off the top of the scary movie heap.