Why isn't 1408 considered a horror classic? Today I explain why.
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When it comes to Stephen King adaptations there tends to be two categories. The first are the "classics" that regardless of King's own approval have stuck in the public consciousness for years. This includes The Shawshank Redemption, It, Brian DePalma's take on Carrie, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The second are the gigantic misfires that include Dreamcatcher, Maximum Overdrive and both interations of Firestarter. But somewhere near the first category, but not quite there, we have the "solid adaptations" that did what they set out to do without making a giant splash. Those include Netflix adpations like Gerald's Game and 1922 and this oft-forgotten 2007 gem, 1408.
The Setup
John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, an author who makes his living writing about haunted locations. His latest project? Spending a night in room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel in New York City. But Enslin's initial skepticism quickly turns to horror as the room reveals it's malevolent intent to torment the skeptical author...
I'm coming at this movie from a slightly different approach than I would a normal review. Because the genreal consensus with this movie is...it's pretty good! It's not anyone's favorite King adaptation, but for a PG-13 horror flick this is a best case scenario.
Part of it is that the movie has impeccable casting. While there are more than two named parts, you're really only going to remember two characters: John Cusack's Mike Enslin and Samuel L. Jackson's hotel manager Gerald Olin.
And Jackson, while he does his role exceptionally well, is really only here to deliver exposition, drop the movie's one f bomb, and lay on the foreshadowing about the room's evil capabilities as thick as humanly possible. Which he does really well.
This movie also reminded me why I like John Cusack as a perfomer. The thing about Cusack is that he is...one of the most agreeable on screen presences you're going to come across. Half the reason two of his best movies/performances work as well as they do is because when Cusack is playing a bit of a shithead in High Fidelity and a literal murderer in Grosse Pointe Blank, he doesn't feel like one.
Which is the right vibe for Enslin, since he needs to be a bit wry and sarcastic, but also not a dickhead the audience is hoping to see go through the ringer. The audience won't hate him and it allows them to sympathize with his plight.
From there you can throw a kitchen sink of threats at him that range from environmental to personal for about 60-70 minutes before we resolve things.
Which brings me to the real thrust of this review: why doesn't this movie stick the same way other King adaptations do?
It's a horror movie from the late 2000s that didn't suck. Shouldn't this be approaching new classic status?
In short, it could have, but I think the movie is weak in two particular areas that prevented it from staying in, at the very least, the horror movie lexicon.
The first is a bit boring, so we'll get it out of the way first: character development.
Character Development
I think the movie's intent is solid. It's trying to avoid an exposition dump about Mike, since they're about to do that with Samuel L. Jackson when he details the room's grimy history, so it does its best to fill in the gaps about Mike as a person either through veiled references in conversation or via his worst moments being thrown into focus via the room's influence.
But that presents a problem when you need the room to turn the screws on Michael specifically, when we don't know his history. Put another way, it's hard to get too upset or freaked out about what's haunting Mike, when we just learned about it two seconds ago.
So while the audience eventually learns that Mike lost his daughter to cancer, and we can piece together that that had a large hand in developing this hardened cynic, that's way different than knowing about that beforehand. It means there's no time between setup and payoff.
This also makes the details the movie does focus on, and doesn't follow-up on, stand out. For instance, the movie tells us that Mike, when he was younger wrote a novel that is clearly very personal, was very well-received, and the total opposite of the material he writes now. Is his daughter's passing responsible for the shift? Was it a callous cash grab? Does it have something to do with his father who is apparently captured in his novel that was a "real piece of work?" Hard to say, because the movie doesn't tell us.
These are the details you need to make the emotional manipulations of the room really work. Because when we already know his weak spots, and then see the room target them, it means these moments hit harder.
A Lack of Distinctive Visuals
1408 understandably applies a kitchen sink approach to its horrors and challenges for Mike. One moment we've got creepy calls over the phone, the next we have video-esque distortions of other people who've stayed in the room ending their lives all before we start breaking the room down with literal snow, floods, and fire. Each new turn in Mike's stay in the room comes with a drastic shift in the visual palette to make the separations obvious.
It's also lacks "that moment." The one visual or moment that will stick with you long after you've stopped watching the film.
That doesn't mean the movie is bad, it clearly isn't and I'd argue it's one of the better King adaptations, but that's something that prevents it from being deemed a "classic."
This is something I addressed a long while ago in my breakdown of the oft-forgotten Oliver Stone movie Born on the Fourth of July. That movie is, very good and features a number of great performances including the central performance from a young Tom Cruise. But there's nothing in the movie that captures the despondent feeling of being a soldier in Vietnam like Willem Dafoe throwing his arms to the heavens as he's gunned down in the jungle like Platoon.
Was there room for a distinctive visual? Maybe. There's a number of clever moments that I think the movie could have expanded upon or integrated into the room's routine. For instance, I really like how the vibe in the art shifts at one point before a ship painting basically explodes water into the room. That's great. So...why not preview Mike's entire journey with a series of generic Thomas Kinkaid-ass paitings? That would stand out.
Granted the lack of distinctive visuals is also something you run into when your active villain is literally a room. That lack of a tactile entity doesn't mean the story doesn't work, but it is a limitation.
A Few Steps from Greatness
1408 is a great example of a movie that leans on the mind games and central performance to create the atmosphere and scares, versus the script. Which means the movie is good, because Cusack is great in this kind of role and they do plenty to keep things interesting, but also means it's a few steps from greatness.
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