1408 (2007)
There are certain narrative elements to which Stephen King regularly returns in his storytelling – ‘supernatural’ powers as metaphors, the physical or emotional incarceration of his characters, and tales told in flashback, to name a few. 1408 is a story that takes many of these elements found separately across his work, and brings them together in one piece – not least because the short story was originally intended to work as a demonstration of narrative technique. This being the case, it naturally lends itself to a taut, high-concept horror film, which hurtles through a nailbiting roster of scares to a satisfying, character-driven conclusion – and that’s exactly what was delivered by director Mikael Hafstrom here, using a script by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.
John Cusack stars as author Mike Enslin, who’s built a successful career writing non-fiction books about haunted locations, despite the fact that he does not believe in paranormal phenomena. This is the internal conflict that drives the character, as we discover during the course of proceedings that his apparent general apathy stems from the death of his daughter and subsequent separation from his wife.
After establishing the nature of his personality and career, the story sees Mike receive intriguing information about a supposedly haunted hotel room at The Dolphin Hotel in New York. We discover that this is the city in which he lived with his family, and so it potentially holds difficult memories for him – but he’s determined to investigate this room for a new project. So, he books himself in and explains his intentions to hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) – who makes no secret of the fact that very bad things have happened in room 1408, and that Mike will be entering it at his own risk.
Mike enters the room, and immediately begins to feel its effects. There’s a clock that counts down, pictures that change, and even the outside of the building seems to shift. Disturbing, mocking voices can be heard on the phone, and soon enough, the room begins to use Mike’s own bad memories and internal conflict against him. It tries to lure his wife into joining him so that it can have another victim, and produces the ghost of his dead daughter to torment him.
At various points, Mike believes he’s escaped the room, only to find that people he recognizes from working in the hotel pop up – revealing his freedom to be an illusion. This is, in fact, the most vital point of the story, because it cuts to the heart of the piece. In creating a tale designed to illustrate the fundamentals of narrative technique, Stephen King addresses one of the oldest tales of all: the fear of challenge to our own manufactured reality.
After a devastating personal tragedy, over which Mike had no control, he’s manufactured his own reality in order to get through the day. This reality involves him blaming his wife for the way his daughter willingly embraced death caused by illness, being successful at something he doesn’t believe in, and spending his days trying to exert control over supposedly ‘unexplained’ phenomena. Time spent in room 1408 challenges every aspect of that reality in the form of a horror story, and the result of that is the fact that Mike can no longer trust his perception of reality at all.
In this way, this film adaptation of Stephen King’s functional short story works almost as its own homage to the entire works of the author – as each of his characters have demonstrated, at one point or another, the propensity to tell themselves whatever it is they need to function in an unkind world. We all do it, because it’s a basic element of human nature. That is the kernel of truth that resides at the centre of all Stephen King’s work and, by extension, the heart of the best adaptations of the same. The reason is simple – it gives rise to the most moving drama, and the most effective horror. After all, if we can’t trust the stories we tell ourselves, what then?
