Netflix Pick: 1408 (Theatrical Version)

I signed up for Netflix when I was a sophomore in college. I was a woman possessed by three at a time unlimited movies. I had a schedule for sending and recieving. I beefed up my queue and once I made my way through 168 movies, six television series, and a numerous Shirley Temples, I stopped ordering movies. Now, my movie queue has twelve painfully awful movies that I could go without seeing, but I need to anyway. You should thank me for saving you the trouble of watching them.

The Netflix Sleeve o' Knowing blurb says:

"No one can explain the strange goings-on in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel. In this thriller based on a Stephen King story, writer and paranormal debunker Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is determined to demystify the ghostly events, even though a hotel clerk (Samuel L. Jackson) begs him to rethink his plans. Mike needs to write another book soon, and room 1408 may be his ticket to the top of the best seller list. But will he survive even one night" Rated PG-15, 1h 44m, 2007.

Oh I'm shuddering. This movie is definitely going to test my thug. I would like to make a few things clear before I jump in.

1. It took me 3 tries to get through the first 40 minutes of the movie.
2. I am typing this as I watch the movie.
3. I used to know what the L in Samuel L Jackson stood for.

The movie opens with Mike investigating a room where the paranormal activities that he doesn't believe in, but writes about anyway, the same ones that pay his bills. He publishes a book, aptly titled "The 10 Most Haunted Places in America". Mike then heads to a local book store where nobody knows who he is or that he is doing a reading there that day. Shockingly, four people show up. One of them was a cute college pseudo-beatnik, who asks him to sign a copy of his first book, which is apparently a novel about a father and a son.

So Mike, who is clearly aware that he is operating below capacity, goes to check his PO box. He reads through the first few fan letters when he comes across a postcard. It is from The Dolphin Hotel and the message says "Stay out of 1408". Now, that sounds like I fair warning to me. I would have stayed out of 1408, and gone on unaffected. After reading this postcard, Mike does the logical thing, goes surfing, wipes out, I'm not invested enough to get the symbolism and books room 1408 at The Dolphin.

One of the higher ups in the hotel's administration is Mr. Olin, who explains that he doesn't let anyone stay in 1408 because nobody lasts in there for more than an hour. They all wind up dying. Another warning that he chooses to ignore. I'm not sure why this baffles me because people smoke cigarettes every day even though there's a written warning on the box that eventually, it will kill you. After going over a laundry list of all the deaths that have occurred in this "evil fucking room", he offers Mike a drink of some vintage spirit. He probably slipped him a mickey. Nonetheless, Mike insists on staying in the room, and lasting til the morn. Mr. Olin is so pissed off and says "Damn it to hell" in a way only Mr. Jackson can pull off.

A whole bunch of strange things begin to happen, while Mike is sippin on his sizzurp. The clock radio begins the countdown from an hour, he begins to see the ghosts of the 1408 club, the ghost of his father and his sick daughter, who is also dead. The window falls on his hand a breaks it, there is a phantom axe murderer who looks like Mike Myers of Halloween fame. In an attempt to escape to the next room, Mike climbs out the window and onto a ledge almost falls and then recovers like a champ...Tommy Pickles style. When he gets back in and checks the map, 1408 is the only room in the hotel. I lose interest.

He goes through flash backs of his daughter's illness and he gets all guilty.
The room turns into an icebox where his heart used to be.
Mike is still drinking the roofies cognac VSOP.
He video chats with his wife, who calls the cops. When they talk again, the cops are in an empty 1408. The apocalypse happens in the room. It made me thing of the scene in Macbeth where the king dies and the world shakes.

Okay so the surfing thing just came full circle, Mike wiped out wakes up in the hospital, the estranged wife is there. This whole scene was all a dream from Word Up magazine. Mike and Lily go out to dinner and he's drinking tequila. I checked the info and there's still another twenty minutes left, so there is another twist coming. And Mike is still dreaming. I kind of feel bad because he wrote the whole book that would save him...in. his. dream. Fuck his life. The room goes from tundra to charred remains. Mike is hatching a scheme to escape.

With just under four minutes left in his hour, Katie, the dead daughter shows up and disintegrates in his arms. The clock radio resets itself for the hour and he can choose to relive it again or to hang himself. The hotel operator refers to this hanging as an express check out system. I laughed so hard, I farted. Mike is back in the real world and makes a bottle bomb of the roofies cognac. Firemen save him, he and Lily get back together. She wants to get rid of all the clothes from the fire. Mike takes out the tape recorder, and tells her to throw the rest away. He presses play, the whole exchange between him and Katie is on there. Lily hear it, drops the box, he smiles forbodingly. FIN.

This movie wasn't bad at all. I'll give it a 3.5