Okay now we’ve got a psychological horror that handles itself pretty well all the way through unlike the Shining. I thought 1408 was pretty solid and had a lot going on for it. It’s a pretty well balanced movie with a good story and some pretty spooky moments. It handled the idea of how can you trap someone in a hotel room pretty well and is worth the watch. The cast is very small but fortunately Mike really nails it as the main character. He’s someone who is very easy to follow the whole time.

The movie starts by introducing us to Mike who isn’t the nicest guy. He doesn’t even humor the owners of a hotel as they try to tell him how haunted it is. Instead he just dives in and makes a mockery of the whole thing. See, Mike is a writer who visits all kinds of spooky hotels and motels in order to debunk all of the horror stories surrounding them. He doesn’t believe in the supernatural one bit and takes pleasure in knocking them down. The next spot on his list is room 1408 at the Dolphin hotel. The manager Gerald begs Mike not to go into the room but Mike doesn’t care. He’s going to debunk yet another spot. Unfortunately this place seems a little more serious than the others, in fact…he’s having a hard time getting out. Has Mike finally picked a fight with an opponent that he just cannot defeat?

Mike is a jerk but that works really well for a film like this. I like when the main character is so confident in the fact that spooks don’t exist. He absolutely relishes in proving his point and the guy is mean to everybody. He’s always got a sarcastic remark at the ready and it takes a while for his confidence to fade. I think part of why this is fun is because in most cases like in real life you’d be on his side. (Not with the rudeness but at least the confidence that the hotel room isn’t haunted) The good thing about people being superstitious is that you can probably get the room at a discount usually.

So when he starts to be overpowered by the specters, well that would have happened regardless of how confident he was. So at least this way he got to have some laughs in first. The hotel room is definitely very powerful as we see it command many abilities. Full on ability to submit hallucinations, moving matter through the cosmos, impersonation, etc. How much of this is pure telepathy is hard to say but either way it isn’t going down easily. In a lot of ways you could say it’s like Mike is trapped in purgatory. He is forced to relive his most painful moments over and over and over again. That’s probably the scariest part of the whole ordeal. Not the physical pain but the fact that it may not have an end and will keep on looping forever and ever. That’s where the true despair begins to set in.

The film can get a little violent when we see images of the previous tenants but for the most part this is definitely more about the atmosphere. Like Mike being powerless to watch the hotel tell his wife to come over so that she can be trapped as well or reliving his daughter’s death. The room slowly works to just tear apart his mind bit by bit and it’s a really intense tactic. The room just physically beating him up wouldn’t be nearly as effective. It does a little bit of that too though like the window slamming on his hands or getting blasted with hot water. It’s just more of a side effect as opposed to that really being the focus here.

One thing that also adds to the film is how normal things appear at first. Like yes the room is haunted but the electrician still shows up to help Mike fix the cooling system and things like that. He’s not completely isolated the whole time but it slowly begins to get to that point more and more. By the time he realizes the danger he is in, it’s just too late. The door is impossible to break down and yeah the window is open but there is nowhere to go to. The room strategically does allow for Mike to destroy himself but that’s about it. The room continues to pressure him into taking his own life which is when he would be truly defeated.

I’ll admit that the backstory parts tend to be the least interesting though. We see the flashbacks of him and his wife and their daughter. It’s going through some emotional beats but the whole time you’re just waiting to get back into the main struggle against the room. That is absolutely where the real action is and since you already know what happened in the past, it’s not like there are any surprises left to be had there. That I would put as a slight weakness here.

The only other weakness for me would be the ending. I don’t think it was nearly as impactful as it could have been. In a lot of ways it’s surprisingly happy and the final stinger just doesn’t counter that much. What I would have personally liked more would have been for Mike to have “escaped” and the final scene is his wife asking him to close the windows. He doesn’t respond so she walks over but he’s gone and she sees the number 1408 above the door. She is now going to be the room’s next opponent. Perhaps too mean spirited but it would have been an intense ending that also works as sequel bait.

Overall, 1408 was a good movie. It succeeded in being really ominous the whole time and making things super difficult without it feeling completely hopeless. I also thought the first act with all of the build up was handled really well. I liked the owner of the Dolphin hotel who definitely did a good job of hyping the place up. He seemed to understand the rules pretty well and did everything in his power to try and dissuade Mike from staying. At the end of the day, there were just no words that could have pulled something like that off. Mike is the kind of guy who was going to attempt this challenge no matter what. With a good amount of fakeouts and creative trials, 1408 is a film that I would definitely recommend.

Overall 6/10