1408 (2007)

Dir: Mikael Håfström

A hack writer of ghostly guide books (John Cusack) checks into a supposedly haunted room at a New York hotel, with intent to expose it as a hoax. Needless to say, it isn't a hoax and, before long, the clichés are wheeled out in their droves. The room goes hot! The room goes cold! Hark! The sound of infants crying in the walls! You know the drills. It's actually done rather well for the first forty five minutes or so and there are even some nicely orchestrated jump scares. Sadly, as you'd expect from a Stephen King adaptation, it all goes a bit too far in the final reel and loses its understated subtlety in favour of screen-saturating CGI, convoluted dream sequences and faux-philosophical sentimentalism. Like the movie "Dead End", it builds up so many creepy ideas that it paints itself into a corner from which it can only escape via a massive cop-out. There are worse movies and it's nice to see a traditional ghost story on the big screen again, but this won't change your life. What I mostly took away from it was that I want to get my own little Samuel L. Jackson that lives in my fridge and talks shit at me. **