| 1408 | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Mikael Håfström |
| Produced by | Lorenzo di Bonaventura |
| Written by | Matt Greenberg Scott Alexander Larry Karaszewski |
| Story by | Stephen King Short story |
| Starring | John Cusack Samuel L. Jackson Mary McCormack |
| Music by | Gabriel Yared |
| Cinematography | Benoît Delhomme |
| Editing by | Peter Boyle |
| Distributed by | Dimension Films Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | June 22, 2007 |
| Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million[1] |
| Box office | $131,998,242 |
1408 is a 2007 American psychological horror film based on the Stephen King short story of the same name directed by Swedish director Mikael Håfström, who earlier had directed the horror film Drowning Ghost. The cast includes John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, and Mary McCormack. The film was released in the U.S. on June 22, 2007, although July 13 (a Friday the 13th) is mentioned as the release date in the trailer posted on the website.
The film follows Mike Enslin, an author who specializes in the horror genre. Mike's career is essentially based on investigating allegedly haunted houses, although his repeatedly unfruitful studies have left him disillusioned and pessimistic. Through an anonymous warning (via postcard), Mike eventually learns of the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, which houses the infamous "Room 1408". Interested yet skeptical, Mike decides to spend one night in the hotel although manager Olin (Jackson) warns him strongly against it. Mike has a series of bizarre experiences in the room.
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Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a skeptic and author who, after the death of his daughter Katie (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), writes books appraising supernatural vacation spots as real, despite knowing they are fake. After his latest book, he receives an anonymous postcard from The Dolphin, a hotel on Lexington Avenue in New York City, bearing the message, "Don't enter 1408." Viewing this as a challenge, Mike attempts to book a reservation for room 1408, but the hotel will not rent him the room. However, after being informed by Mike's agent, Sam Farrell (Tony Shalhoub), that the Fair Housing Act requires hotels to rent unoccupied rooms, the Dolphin reluctantly reserves room 1408 for Mike. After arriving at the Dolphin, Mike is pulled aside by the hotel manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), who warns him that no one has lasted more than an hour in 1408. He attempts to bribe Mike not to stay in the room, giving him expensive Cognac and a file folder of information on the room to try to convince him, but Mike refuses. Olin reluctantly agrees to let him stay.
Once inside the room, Mike pulls out his Mini-Cassette recorder and speaks into it, describing the room's dull and tired appearance and its unimpressive lack of unusual phenomena. During his examination, the radio suddenly starts blaring "We've Only Just Begun" by the The Carpenters, but Mike assumes this is just a trick of Olin's. Later, at 8:07, the song plays again and the digital display flickers and changes to a countdown starting from "60:00," echoing Olin's warning that no one lasts in the room more than an hour. Shortly after this, Mike becomes deafened by a loud ringing and his hand is crushed by a window sash. His hand is then scalded when he attempts to wash the injury in the sink and boiling steam comes out of the faucet instead of regular water. Mike unsuccessfully tries to leave the room: the doorknob falls off the door and when he climbs out onto the window ledge to escape to another room, the windows to the other rooms have all vanished. All the while, Mike is repeatedly assailed by spectral visions of a blade-wielding maniac and former victims of the room killing themselves. He also has hallucinations of his family, including his mentally-ill father and his daughter's time in the hospital before her death.
Desperate, Mike uses his laptop to contact his estranged wife Lily via video chat but the conversation ends abruptly when the sprinkler system shorts out his laptop. Mike attempts to call for help again by climbing into the air vents. However, he is chased back into the room by a corpse-like figure. The room temperature drops to subzero when the laptop suddenly begins to work again, and Lily tells him the police have entered 1408, but the room is empty. A doppelgänger of Mike appears in a new chat window and urges Lily to come to the hotel herself; then double winks at Mike. The room shakes violently and suddenly floods with water. Mike surfaces on a beach, the result of a surfing accident earlier in the film, and after returning to a normal life and reconciling with Lily, he assumes it was a dream. Lily believes his story about his experience and persuades him to write a book about it. However, he visits the post office and recognizes a construction crew as the hotel staff from his "dream". The workers then destroy the walls of the room, revealing Mike is still trapped in 1408, the walls now burnt and broken. A vision of Katie appears to Mike, and after some reluctance he embraces her in tears, before she crumbles to dust. Mike hears the alarm clock begin to play and searches for it, collapsing onto his side and seeing it under the rubble as it counts down. When the countdown ends, the room is suddenly restored to normal, and the alarm clock resets itself to 60:00.
The phone rings, and the friendly female voice of the hotel operator informs him that he can relive the hour over and over again, or take advantage of their "express checkout system", that is, death. Mike sees a hangman's knot and has a vision of himself hanged, but refuses. The operator then reminds him that Lily is on her way to the room, and Mike responds the room cannot have her. Mike uses the bottle of Cognac from Olin to make a Molotov Cocktail and solemnly sets the room on fire, smoking a cigarette as the flames spread. Meanwhile, the hotel is evacuated and Lily is seen in traffic on her way to the hotel when the crowd emerges on the street. Mike declares 1408 the scariest site he has ever visited and hurls his ashtray through the closed window, causing a backdraft that consumes the room and Mike in flames. Firefighters enter the room and pull Mike to safety, while in his office Olin smiles and whispers "Well done, Mr. Enslin." Later, as Mike recovers in a New York hospital, with Lily at his bedside, he tells her about Katie, but Lily doesn't believe him. The two reconcile and Mike moves back in with Lily, and during the move she hands him a box of items retrieved from the rubble of 1408. Mike finds his tape recorder and after some tinkering gets it to play, and the recorder replays his conversation with Katie. Lily overhears and stares at Mike in shock while Mike solemnly stares back.
Director Mikael Håfström has stated that the ending for 1408 was reshot because test audiences felt that the original ending was too much of a "downer".[2] The alternate ending is the default ending on the Blu-ray release and on the two-disk collector's edition. Canadian networks Space and The Movie Network broadcast this version of the film. The UK and Australian single DVD also uses this ending. This is also the only ending on the iTunes version.
The original ending sees the backdraft engulfing the room as Mike hides under the table, happy to see the room destroyed as he dies. During Mike's funeral, Olin approaches Lily and Mike's agent where he unsuccessfully attempts to give her a box of Mike's possessions, including the tape recorder. Before being cut off, Olin claims that the room was successfully destroyed and that it will no longer harm anyone ever again, which is why he claims "Mike did not die in vain". Going back to his car, Olin listens to the recording in his car, becoming visibly upset when he hears Katie's voice on the tape. He looks in the car mirror and imagines seeing a glimpse of Enslin's burnt corpse in the backseat. Having heard and seen enough, Olin places the tape recorder back in the box and drives off. The film ends at the gutted room, with an apparition of Mike looking out the window and smoking a cigarette. He hears his daughter calling his name, and disappears as he walks towards the room's door. A sound of a door closing is heard and the screen blacks out.
In November 2003 and 2004, Dimension Films optioned the rights to the 1999 short story "1408" by Stephen King. The studio hired screenwriter Matt Greenberg to adapt the story into a screenplay.[3] In October 2005, Mikael Håfström was hired to direct 1408, with the screenplay being rewritten by screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.[4] In March 2006, actor John Cusack was cast to star in the film,[5] joined by actor Samuel L. Jackson the following April.[6] In July, actress Kate Walsh was cast to star opposite Cusack as the protagonist's ex-wife,[7] but she was forced to exit in August due to scheduling conflicts with her role on Grey's Anatomy. She was replaced by actress Mary McCormack.[8] The Hotel Pennsylvania was used for many of the interior and room shots for the film. According to John Cusack, the Roosevelt Hotel in New York was used for some of the exterior shots of the Dolphin.[9]
1408 opened on June 22, 2007 to generally positive reviews. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 78% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 154 reviews.[10] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 64 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.[11]
James Berardinelli awarded the film three stars out of four, praising it as "the best horror film of the year". He offered significant praise for Cusack's performance as Mike Enslin, writing that "this is John Cusack's movie to carry, and he has no problem taking it where it needs to go". He found the film to be a refreshing experience, believing it "reminds us what it's like to be scared in a theater rather than overwhelmed by buckets of blood and gore".[12] Many critics believed the film to be far superior to other adaptations of Stephen King novels and stories. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a very positive review, describing the film as "one of the good Stephen King adaptations, one that maintains its author's sly sense of humor and satiric view of human nature". He ultimately believed the film to be a "more genuinely scary movie than most horror films".[13]
Several critics, however, found the film to be underwhelming. Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe wrote a mixed review, describing the film as "a lot of consonants and no vowels". He went on to compare the film unfavorably to The Shining, a similar King adaptation, believing 1408 lacked that film's "lunging horror and dramatic architecture". Although he believed the film "conjures a wonderful anticipatory mood of dread in the first 30 minutes", he ultimately believed the film "then blows it to stylish smithereens".[14] Rob Salem of the Toronto Star awarded the film two stars out of four, believing it to be a predictable, "hit and miss" production. Like Morris, Salem wrote that "Even as haunted hotel King movies go, 1408 is certainly no Shining. Not even the TV-movie version."[15]
In its opening weekend, the film opened in second place at the box office, grossing US$20.6 million in 2,678 theaters.[16] 1408 had a production budget of US$25 million.[17] The film went on to gross US$132 million, of which US$71.9 million was from Canada and the United States.[17]
The DVD was released on October 2, 2007 with a standard 1-Disc Edition (widescreen or fullscreen), and a 2-Disc Collector's Edition that contains both versions of the ending and 12 more minutes of the film.[18]
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