Why is Room 1408 such a powerful psychological thriller ?

By MADELEINE HARGREAVES

Room 1408 is a film based on a Stephen King short story and directed by Mikael Håfström. Mike Enslin is a cynic. He is the author of books that detail and debunk popular ghost stories and haunted hot-spots, and it quickly becomes obvious that he is somewhat disenchanted with the life that he leads.

That is until he receives an invitation to Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel, a room in which lies his and arguably John Cusack's biggest challenge yet in the title role. It soon becomes apparent that 1408 is not your standard horror movie, as what follows, after an enjoyably creepy encounter with hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L Jackson), is essentially 90s minutes of John Cusack in a room.

Room 1408 allows him to display his range to great effect as the room confronts him with the physical dangers of the present and the emotional tragedies of his past. It is a fundamentally different kind of horror, personal rather than existential.

Yet cheap tricks aren't enough to scare either Enslin (or the audience). Neither is Samuel L. Jackson as the ghoulish hotel manager. The problem, it seems, is not ghosts of poltergeists'; "It's just one evil room," whispers Jackson ominously, as Enslin heads upstairs.

Once inside, he finds the room has bizarre shape-shifting properties. While Håfström eventually turns 1408 into a frozen tomb that cracks and shifts like an arctic ice shelf, it's in the smaller details that the creepiness escalates.

Scenes from the film

The closeup of the old-fashioned lock mechanism as Mike inserts the key (the room itself having refused any security improvements) are master strokes in terms of tension-building. The more conventional horror trappings of the first half are present and accounted for too, with Enslin's trained skepticism unwillingly giving way to the realization that Room 1408 is messing with him in impossible ways.

He finds himself unable to get out of the room and locked in a one-on-one battle to the death with the "evil" room, which may represent purgatory, hell, or both. So we are left for the next hour or so, with Enslin and his demons.

He has an reporter's Dictaphone which he periodically whispers to "We're here to get a story and we don't rattle; Some smartass said something about the banality of evil. If that is so, this is the seventh circle of hell".

The force that inhabits the room is so utterly, terrifyingly alien that it is almost beyond human comprehension. What Mike Enslin encounters isn't a haunted room but an unfathomable cosmic terror. King and Håfström do more than give us a scary story - they take the protagonist and us to the edge of an abyss.

Having said that, King does this in the story in a different place than Håfström does in the film. One of the most enduring, bone-chilling image in the short story comes toward the end. As the walls of Room 1408 begin to literally crumble around Enslin, an awful, horribly foreign yellow light pours in - like a sunset on a different planet, or in another dimension.

We never learn what the source of the light is, but we know that it's real, and dangerous and it drives Enslin out of his mind. The movie dutifully reproduces the image, but to Håfstrom, it's a piece of psychological symbolism instead. As the light floods the room, an image of his dead daughter appears to Enslin, forcing him to relive one of the most difficult moments of his life. It's an effective moment, poignant and even scary in its way but it doesn't attempt to replicate the story's elemental dread.

In the film, one of the most terrifyingly chilling scenes is the sudden appearance of Enslin's father in a wheelchair inside what appears to be the bathroom in a family home. This scene materialises within the hotel room and the light is a harsh, white and yet unnatural.

Again it seems to emanate from another dimension. The viewer fears that Enslin's father's face is suddenly going to become horribly distorted and that he is going to reach out from his chair to grab Enslin. However, this does not happen and instead he mutters "As I was, you are. As I am, you will be", a quote attributed to the Roman poet Horace regarding death. He reaches out in a state of vulnerability, which appears to reduce Enslin to tears.

We can only assume that the protagonist is having to face some regret from his past conduct with his father while he was alive. Another similarly disturbing scene is when Enslin briefly escapes into the roof space above room 1408.

He is confronted by the supposed sight of his wife below in the room next door, nursing his daughter as a baby, while she berates him for not helping her. He is unable to make her hear him since she is not really there. Enslin is forced to leave by a horrific, mumified monster who suddenly appears in the air vents and chases him back to the room.

While it's relatively light on big scares, 1408 instead creates a powerful sense of unease that combines wonderfully with Cusack's portrayal of a man enduring his own private hell.

Each challenge thrown up by the room takes the movie somewhere new and unexpected, ensuring that the movie never really gets tired or repetitive, and as a result each scene in the room is tense and very creepy. The occasional terrifying scene, such as early on, when he is suddenly attacked by a sinister woman with a crowbar, who appeared come from a reflection in a room opposite, does also help to increase the suspense.

Samuel L. Jackson gives an excellent, chilling performance as the manager who is intent on not letting Mike enter room 1408. His determination to convince Mike not to enter the room only fuels Mike's determination to do just that. Through him, we pick up on the facts about the room Mike's research couldn't provide.

His warnings chill the audience but leave enough open so that we still don't know what we're in for. When he appears inside 1408's minibar and lectures Enslin about how he has broken numerous spirits, the audience wonders whether he is simply the hotel manager. As he continues probing Enslin "There is nothing after death and no god to put things right, is there Mike?", it begins to dawn on the viewer that perhaps Jackson is an avatar either for an angel or the Judeo-Christian God.

By far the most frustrating and disturbing part of the film is near the end, when the audience is led to believe that Mike's nightmare is over. It appears that the whole experience was a dream sequence, which Enslin has woken from. He finds himself washed up on the beach with his surf board, which is a repeat of a scene from the beginning of the film.

He sighs with relief, is taken to hospital and visited by his wife, who he is reconciled with. A few happy days pass, in which he writes in his diary that though his dream of room 1408 was terrifying, somehow he feels renewed by it.

Imagine his (and our) horror and dismay when he walks into the post office and it gradually dawns on him that all the people there are people from the Dolphin Hotel! These characters begin smashing down the office walls and soon Mike finds himself back in the room. This is obviously horrendous, since it is the ultimate nightmare; to think you have escaped the horror, only for it to start all over again.

Director Mikael Håfström stated that the ending for 1408 was reshot because test audiences felt that the original ending was too harrowing. The original ending, (The UK single DVD and collector's box set) sees the backdraft engulfing the room as Enslin hides under the table, happy to see the room destroyed as he dies.

During Enslin's funeral, Olin approaches Lily and Enslin's agent where he unsuccessfully attempts to give her a box of Enslin's possessions including the tape recorder. Before being cutoff Olin claims that the room was successfully destroyed and that it will no longer harm anyone ever again and claims that "Enslin did not die in vain".

Going back to his car, Olin listens to the recording in his car and becomes 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 Enslin 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 which is very menacing.

The alternative ending, which is the version that I watched in Sri Lanka is much more palatable. After setting room 1408 on fire, Enslin recovers in a New York hospital, Lily at his bedside. He swears that he saw Katie but Lily refuses to believe him. After his recovery Enslin moves back in with Lily, beginning work on a new novel about his stay in 1408.

While sorting through a box of items from his night in 1408 that Lily wants to discard, Enslin comes across his Mini Cassette recorder.

After some difficulty he manages to get the tape to play; it begins with Enslin's dictation of 1408's appearance but cuts in with audio from his interaction with the apparition of his daughter. Lily, who is standing by him listening to the audio, drops a box she was holding from the shock of hearing Katie's voice on the Mini Cassette recorder.

The scene ends with Enslin staring at Lily's face. A film well worth watching, though I would advise you not to see it alone in the house at night !