1408
Theatrical release poster
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.

Contents 1 Plot 1.1 Alternate Ending 2 Cast 3 Production 4 Reception 4.1 Box office 5 Home media 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Plot

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, though he admits to never having a supernatural experience. After his latest book, he receives an anonymous postcard depicting 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 literary 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 takes him to his office. He explains to Mike that the room is shut and that no one is allowed in, and is only cleaned monthly and supervised by himself. He gives him a case file, telling him that, in the 95 years of the hotel, there were 56 deaths in 1408, and that no one survived more than an hour, but Mike wants to stay in the room. Olin attempts to bribe Mike not to stay in the room, giving him expensive cognac, 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 appearance and its unimpressive lack of unusual phenomena. During his examination, the clock radio suddenly starts blaring the song, "We've Only Just Begun", but Mike assumes this is just a trick of Olin's. Later, at 8:07, the song plays again and the clock radio's digital display 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, 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 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 hammer-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. Mike then spots that there are now only bricks on the wall, and on the hotel map, there is no other rooms, just his.

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 winks at Mike. The room shakes violently and Mike, in rage, breaks a picture of a ship in the storm and suddenly the room floods.

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 all a dream. Lily believes his story about his experience and persuades him to write a book about it. However, when visiting the post office to send the manuscript to his publisher, he 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 clock radio 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 clock radio resets itself to 60:00.

The phone rings, and the 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, suicide. Mike sees a hangman's noose and has a vision of himself hanged, but refuses. 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.

Meanwhile, the room activates the sprinkler system, attempting to put out the fire, but Mike, wryly saying that he rates the room a perfect 10 on the "shiver scale", hurls his ashtray through the closed window. This causes a backdraft that consumes both 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 the 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. During the move, Lily finds a box of items retrieved from the rubble of 1408. Mike retrieves his tape recorder and after some tinkering, gets it to play. The film ends with the recorder playing back his conversion with Katie, Lily listening in disbelief and Mike staring back, his face filled with grim vindication.

Alternate Ending

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.

Cast

• John Cusack as Mike Enslin
• Samuel L. Jackson as Gerald Olin
• Mary McCormack as Lily Enslin
• Tony Shalhoub as Sam Farrell
• Len Cariou as Mike's father
• Jasmine Jessica Anthony as Katie Enslin
• Isiah Whitlock, Jr. as the Engineer
• Kim Thomson as Hotel Desk Clerk
• Benny Urquidez as Claw Hammer Maniac
• Andrew Lee Potts as Jackson
• Jules de Jongh as the Female Front-Desk Voice on the Phone (Uncredited)

Production

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] According to John Cusack, the Roosevelt Hotel in New York was used for some of the exterior shots of the Dolphin.^[9] The lobby scenes were filmed at the Reform Club in London.^[10]

Reception

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.^[11] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 64 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.^[12]

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".^[13] 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".^[14]

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".^[15] 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."^[16]

Box office

In its opening weekend, the film opened in second place at the box office, grossing US$20.6 million in 2,678 theaters.^[17] 1408 had a production budget of US$25 million.^[18] The film went on to gross US$132 million, of which US$71.9 million was from Canada and the United States.^[18]

Home media

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.^[19]

See also

• Media based on Stephen King works

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: 1408 (film)

• 1408 at the Internet Movie Database
• 1408 at Rotten Tomatoes
• 1408 at Metacritic
• 1408 at AllRovi
• 1408 at Box Office Mojo

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