1408

Oh yeah! Cusack is back! I love his films. This one is about Mike Enslin (Cusack), a writer who travels the country to visit locales noted for their haunted nature. Only, in all the years that Enslin has been doing so, he’s never seen anything unusual. He’s a burned-out, atheistic skeptic. While checking the mail one day he receives an anonymous post card warning him not to stay in Room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel, which is exactly what he plans to do. It will make a nice final chapter, he reckons, for his next book, Haunted Hotel Rooms.

This is not a horror film. It's not a slasher gorefest. Thank goodness it's just a good old fashion scary movie! (BTW that's why I like the Blair Witch Project). Add to that I was the only one in the theater today watching this. ("I want my mommy!" was uttered by me more than once)

The manager of the Dolphin, Gerald Olin (Sam Jackson, in a small but effective role), doesn’t want Enslin staying in the room, which — since 1912 — has been the final resting place for 56 guests, many of whom have met grisly, self-inflicted deaths and others, untimely natural ones. Olin closed the room to the public in the 70s, but because of some manufactured loophole in a civil rights law, he’s forced to allow Enslin to occupy 1408, though he ominously warns him that no one has ever survived an entire hour. It’s not phantoms or specters, he says, it’s just an “evil -BLEEP- room.”

The real success of 1408 is the spot-on casting of Cusack — he’s convincing, he's real, and you find yourself pulling for him and cheering him on. If you like scary movies, this is a must see!

I guarantee you won't make it an hour with out getting the toast scarred out of you! Check into to room 1408!