SummaryRenowned horror novelist Mike Enslin (Cusack) only believes what he can see with his own two eyes. After a string of bestsellers discrediting paranormal events in the most infamous haunted houses and graveyards around the world, he scoffs at the concept of an afterlife. Enslin's phantom-free run of long and lonely nights is about to chan...
SummaryRenowned horror novelist Mike Enslin (Cusack) only believes what he can see with his own two eyes. After a string of bestsellers discrediting paranormal events in the most infamous haunted houses and graveyards around the world, he scoffs at the concept of an afterlife. Enslin's phantom-free run of long and lonely nights is about to chan...
Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom creates a compelling ride of a movie. Every beat of the film is weighted with significance, and our mounting dread becomes almost intolerable.
The horror wouldn't work without Cusack, who makes what could have been a rote acting exercise--Be tough! Now angry! Now defensively funny!--a cathartic ritual instead.
One night in 1408 stretches out until it ends up feeling more like a routine three-day business trip. The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now THAT'S horror.
Don't let this adaptation of Stephen King's 1999 short story fool you - this is no ordinary ghost story. For "1408" is not just "scary" in the normative sense. This is a movie that is terrifying on a very cerebral, existential, and even metaphysical level. To say that the movie "entertained" me would be quite the understatement. What's present is such a multi-layered and endlessly fascinating deconstruction of humanity's perception of things that we take for granted (like time, space, place, etc.) and other things like loss, grief, and fear. It's a magnificently staged film with a powerful central set of thematics and a devoted performance from John Cusack. Definitely one of the more notable Stephen King adaptations I've seen.
In this film, a skeptic tries to investigate (and demystify) the story of an allegedly haunted hotel room. The character, played by John Cussack, is quite stubborn and is convinced that the hotel has no ghosts. Less certain of this is the manager, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who does everything to demoralize the investigator, trying to protect his hotel from that ill-famed room, which remains closed and inaccessible. The two actors work well together and do a good job, especially if we consider that they are more accustomed to working on action films. But the great actor in the movie is the room itself. We never see an entity. In fact, the film is not clear about the existence ****. We see, instead, a man in crisis, struggling with remorse of varied origin, with weights in consciousness. The isolation of the room confronts the investigator Enslin with all these ghosts which, in fact, may be no more than the ghosts of his own past. This is the beauty of this film, deeply psychological: sometimes the ghosts of our lives are the ones that can destroy us if we confront them. The film, however, commits the terrible sin of exaggeration, especially from the final third. It seems that director Mikael Håfström was fascinated by the possibilities of special effects, deciding to deeply distort the room in the strangest ways, trying to fit this into the film and making it a little intractable, taking the focus away from the psychological depth thought out in the script. Special effects, no matter how well done they may be, have their time and should be served to the public in the right measure.
Filme bacaninha, mas não é marcante.Começa bem e se segura até a metade mas perde o suspense em meio a exageros. Enrolou até na hora do desfecho que na real não traz nenhuma revelação.