What do you get when a writer known for ghost stories, haunted tales, and specializing in debunking paranormal occurrences gets a taste of his own scary medicine? A night of fright.
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a best-selling horror novelist and takes on a new book project called Ten Nights in Haunted Hotel Rooms. This should be an easy task for him after discrediting a long line of paranormal myths. But it seems his perfect score is about to change when he checks into suite 1408 at the infamous Dolphin Hotel in New York City. He first meets the hotel manager Mr. Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), who tries to convince him that spending a night alone in the room would be fatal. Soon after he settles in, odd things begin to happen and he must survive disturbing sequences of violence, frightening images of his dead daughter, and the genuine terror of moving ceilings and windows.
Needless to say this sounds like a very frightening movie, but the plot went in too many directions. Stephen King's short story "Everything's Eventual" from his audio book Blood and Smoke is really very good, but when screenplay writers Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander adapted this and tried to lengthen it into a feature film, they lost the focus of an intelligent sci-fi supense drama. Even though John Cusack gives a good verbal and deranged performance, it's not enough. Mary McCormack as Lilly, his estranged wife and mother of their dead daughter, enters much too late in the film to make a real difference to explain why he chases ghost. Samuel L. Jackson's character was at best acceptable considering that he only has a diluted part in the film. The movie relies on CGI to entice the audience with disturbing visuals, but it doesn't work.
Directed by: Mikael Hafstrom
Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes
Release date: June 22, 2007
Genre: Horror/Suspense and Adaptation
Distributor: Dimension Films, MGM, and The Weinstein Company
MPAA Rating: PG-13
