Movie Preview: 1408

A skeptical writer with a list of bestsellers discrediting popular ghost stories becomes a believer when he stays in haunted hotel room 1408. John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, the first visitor to stay in room 1408 in years. He is warned away by the superstitious hotel manager (Samuel L. Jackson), but he senses another bestseller could be behind that forbidden door. Instead, what awaits him is a night of abject terror.

So, yet another Stephen King story comes to film. The man has produced some of the best works of film ever (The Shawshank Redemption coming to mind?) and yet so many have been colossal flops (It, Rose Red). The trailer, which you can see below, has not really hooked me. Maybe it’s the excess of “haunted fill-in-the-blank” stories that Mr. King has produced, but I don’t give those sorts of stories much credit anymore. King allegedly based his original story on Christopher Chacon, a parapsychologist who studied a haunted hotel room in San Diego, California. An interesting tidbit which might make viewing the film a bit scarier, seeing as how real life connections in horror films tend to make the viewer pay closer attention.

Judging from the trailer, there seem to be some scares. And if you’re going to see a Stephen King movie about a killer hotel room, you expect to be scared. The film is being appropriately marketed to fans of the horror genre and, more specifically, Stephen King’s legion of fans. If you fall into one of those two categories, you very likely will find something to love. And Cusack and Jackson don’t often fail—their presence alone makes me curious to see the film. According to the director, Mikael Hafstrom, Cusack carries much of the film himself, as the story focuses on his time spent in 1408. Again, being a big Cusack fan, consider my interest sparked.