1408 (2007)
Directed by Mikael Håfström
A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.
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16 films that influenced 1408
What critics say influenced 1408
On top of all this, we get another variation of an old standby, the Prophet of Doom Who Warns the Hero Away - a character who has been around, in modern form, at least since Melville’s Moby Dick.
In "1408," Mike not only has to weather the scariest room since Janet Leigh stopped by the Bates Motel in "Psycho"; with imaginative CGI surprises lying in chilly wait, he has to enter the darker vortex of his own failings and the tortured past he's trying to forget.
Adaptations of Stephen King horror have produced wildly uneven results from the classic ("Carrie," "The Shining," "Misery") to the disaster ("Children of the Corn," "Maximum Overdrive," "Dreamcatcher"), the middling ("Cujo," "Christine," "Secret Window") to the under appreciated ("Dolores Claiborne," "Apt Pupil").
Those who saw James Caan squirming under the ministrations of Kathy Bates in Misery will know how punishing this scenario can be.
While 1408 isn't on the same plane as The Shawshank Redemption or Misery, it's easily among the best King-inspired motion pictures to-date.
Most obviously things like The Shining, Jacob’s Ladder and Misery.
…its Jacob's Ladder/"Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" escape clause.
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And the public is no stranger to horror films in general, enjoying a haute horror heyday in the '60s and early '70s with "Psycho," "Rosemary's Baby," and "The Exorcist"; moving on to the teen slashers of the late '70s and '80s; the nod-wink "Scream" parodies of the '90s; and most recently, after the success of "Saw" in 2004, torture porn.
…its Jacob's Ladder/"Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" escape clause.
Most obviously things like The Shining, Jacob’s Ladder and Misery.
�No one has lasted more than an hour,� he says thus establishing maybe the best spook story setup since Alejandro Amen�bar�s The Others in 2001.
Intentionally or not, Håfström and his everyman star John Cusack have put together a contemporary re-imagining of 1991 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner Barton Fink.
The hotel room in Barton Fink, the Coen Brothers' 1991 Kafkaesque Hollywood fable, managed to produce a potent sense of dread with just a few cutaways to peeling, perspiring wallpaper.
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Derailed director Mikael Håfström effectively counterbalances the scenes of throat-clenching sadness and claustrophobic shocks, which unfurl in a Groundhog Day delirium.
Ironically, Cusack played a dead guy in another Stephen King movie, Stand by Me (1986).