The room locks Mike inside and then proceeds to bring all of his roiling emotions to the surface, sometimes very cleverly but more often very tediously (a window smashes his hand, the room turns hot and cold, the walls collapse, the room changes temporal dimensions, etc.). Mike actually feels bad about a number of family traumas, including having abandoned his wife Lily ( Mary McCormack) in order to drown his misery in sad-sack drinking, beach-bumming, and lazy writing. Considerably more claustrophobic than that story's Overlook Hotel - it is, after all, set in just one room - 1408 nonetheless deploys the same gimmicks: cracked, bloody walls babies crying ghosts in emotional disarray and flashbacks to distressing personal history (in this case, Mike's daughter, dead of a disease that makes her very pale and dark-eyed). If you've read or seen The Shining, you've probably seen it all, too - or at least what goes on in this room. Jackson), who insists it's not because he cares about Mike but because he doesn't "want to clean up the mess." But Mike thinks he's seen it all ("I know that ghoulies and ghosties don't exist") and takes the room. When the management refuses to let him, Mike gets curious, eventually muscling his way in via legal threats and generally obnoxious behavior. Mike's frustration and cynicism come to a head when an anonymous postcard writer challenges him to stay in room 1408 of Manhattan's Dolphin Hotel - which has produced more than 50 corpses over the decades. He writes cheesy, repetitive "ghostly" travel books ( 10 Haunted Hotels, 10 Haunted Lighthouses) he researches them by spending nights in supposedly haunted rooms, then produces rote manuscripts that appeal to unimaginative readers (his disdain for his audience is revealed during a public reading attended by a few dimwitted fans). Mike ( John Cusack) is depressed about what he does for a living. 1408, based on one of King's short stories, is sort of a mix of both. He also writes frequently about what it feels like to write about scary things and places. Stephen King makes a good living writing about scary things and places. Maybe for me there's a lack of information about how and why this room became such. ![]() But anyway it is appropriate and atmosphere. ![]() ![]() In my opinion, the tired movie tropes that probably shouldn’t have been there are: locked murderous room, and everyone said to the protagonist "Don't go there" (it was useless of course). And I like the choise of actors for this movie, and their acting, of course. The film is sad, the main character's past was shown to spectator step by step. There are some philosophical ideas about our loved once, missed targets, beliefs and broken hopes. I like that in 1408 there are no violent or disgusting gory scenes, the man only gets his hand caught by the window. Old tricks such as a haunted room with blood oozing from walls and defective taps and doors are really creepy here (but the zombie is not). And at the same time the movie is not too complicated for perception. ![]() After watching the feeling of unsolved conundrum remains. What's interesting, our opinion about the reality of the events is changing a few times during the film, and I can't be sure that the final impression is right.
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