Review:
The Dolphin Hotel in New York City has a room on its 14th floor that only gets cleaned once a month with the door propped open. The time the door wasn’t propped open, the cleaning lady inside stabbed herself in the eyes with forks. When he hears this, John Cusack’s Mike Enslin thinks hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel Jackson) is trying to scare him away. Ditto when Mr. Olin hands Enslin a folder detailing all the deaths listed as natural occurrences that have happened in the room. Enslin is insistent on staying in the room, though, and a civil rights-era law requires Mr. Olin to rent the room to him. What happens from there, though, is creepy, eerie, and not just a little bit disturbing. Just how does one do battle with a maniacal room?
In the era of torture porn, it’s quite a treat to have an adaptation from horror master Stephen King make it to the screen. King, at his best, can make you squirm in your chair. He can raise the hairs on the back of your neck. He can scare you. Director Mikael HÃ¥fström has done a great job bringing the chills and scares to bear in this adaptation of King’s short story.
John Cusack is perhaps the only actor to have as high a likability factor for me as Tom Hanks. That likability is a key feature of this film because it’s mostly Cusack’s show. He makes the most of it, too. While not a comedic performance, I haven’t enjoyed him this much since High Fidelity. You feel his agony when he realizes the dangers of room 1408.
The effects and set design are solid and do a nice job of bringing the room and its world to life. I certainly would have enjoyed a little more of the history of the room. Perhaps that will come with sequels or DVD releases, though. Suffice it to say, if you are a horror fan, this is your best bet in quite a while. There are no croaking Japanese ghosts or nubile young women being hanged. We get just what we want: an ample serving of scares from a cast with above-average actors.