CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 06/22/07

Enjoy Your Stay

By peter clines

Take a story from the man considered one of the greatest writers of horror in literary history. Now filter that story through the screenwriters of Masters of Horror and Ed Wood. Toss in the hit men from Grosse Pointe Blanke and Pulp Fiction just to be safe. What do you end up with? A clever, scary-as-hell story that Hollywood hasn't done in a while. One that wracks your nerves rather than assaulting your eyes and leaves you creeped out by…nothing.

1408

Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski

Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a former novelist who's separated from his wife (Mary McCormack) and now makes a living writing books that debunk the paranormal, shattering the legends behind famous haunted houses and graveyards. While working on his latest manuscript, he receives an anonymous tip to check out room 1408 at New York's classic Dolphin Hotel and soon finds himself in conflict with the establishment's manager, the elegant Mister Olin (Samuel L. Jackson). Despite Olin's many bribes, pleadings, and warnings that "no one's ever lasted more than an hour in 1408," the writer insists on staying in the room, convinced that the stories are yet another attempt to create publicity and notoriety, and writing off the room's initial oddities as a clever scam. But room 1408 at the Dolphin is unlike anything Enslin has ever encountered before, and the surprises it has waiting for him have only just begun.

Adaptations tend to fall into one of three categories. The first, alas, encompasses those that leave fans of the original material (and sometimes people who've just gone to see the film) shaking their heads and cursing the screenwriters for their lack of fidelity (The Postman). The second category is for the rare and amazing scripts that somehow manage to bring the story to the screen with minimal changes (Ted Tally's Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs). Finally, we have those screenplays that aren't really word-for-word, or even point-for-point, but still manage to grasp the feel and style of the original source (the Wachowski Bros.' adaptation of V for Vendetta).

The screen version of 1408 falls into this last category. Matt Greenberg (Reign of Fire) and the team of Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (The People vs. Larry Flynt) have taken the original short story by acclaimed novelist Stephen King (America's answer to Charles Dickens) and gently massaged and expanded it to fit the scope and pacing of the big screen. The setup for the story is a bit different, as is the perspective of Enslin's time in the room (a recollection in the short story, but now a real-time account of what he's experiencing), and a few different endings were tried out before they settled on one that worked on film.

Yet, this is still undeniably a King story. We have the flawed and all-too-human hero who gains a form of redemption (although at what cost is anyone's guess). The mundane made eerie with a few small shifts. And King's frequently seen New England point of view that sometimes bad things just happen to good people for no real reason. As Olin explains to his latest guest, there is no phantom or spirit or dark, initial event clouding 1408's past—it's just "an evil fucking room."

With all that in mind, 1408 is just a creepy movie. Unlike many of the senseless, gory things that pass as horror films today, the story is far less Hostel: Part II or The Grudge and much more reminiscent of classic suspense-thrillers like The Haunting of Hill House (especially, for those with good memories, the awful bedroom scene). In this script, terror isn't gray-skinned children or cheap-shot cats that lunge out from off camera. It comes in the form of some folded toilet paper, a pillow mint, and a clock radio. Oh, sure, there are a few phantoms and some bleeding walls, but our nerves are wrenched by what doesn't happen during Enslin's investigation far more than the events that actually do. As each minute passes and we wait for that inevitable something to appear in the mirror, leap out of armoire, or jump out from beneath the bed, the tension is wound tighter and tighter and tighter, to the point that a tilted picture, a malfunctioning thermostat, or a hotel phone operator can be the most blood-curdling thing we've ever encountered.

Movies like this used to be the standard for horror, as told by filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock or talented rookies who couldn't get their mechanical shark to work. Alas, somewhere along the way someone decided torture and splatter were more effective than tension and suspense. The screenwriters of 1408 remind us that making the audience twist and curl up in their seat can be even more effective than making them leap out of it.

1408
MGM/Dimension
Rated PG-13; 94 min.

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Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

1408 courtesy MGM/Dimension

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