"The Room is Fucking Evil"
Jul. 4th, 2007 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsMy one concession to it being a holiday instead of a Saturday (and it's not going to get much Fourth-ier with the rain pouring down instead of firework ash) was going to see a movie. Which rocked like a geology class in a quarry.
1408. It's a number I associate more with Henry IV and Shakespeare than terror, but DAMN! That was one of the finest horror movies I've seen in a long time! A good horror movie, like a good romance novel, is much to be desired and so rarely found in execution. I was expecting it to fall apart or dumb down or (since it is based on King) go over the top.
1408 did none of these. It built slowly, but in a good director's hands, suspense is more terrifying than gore, and an early scene that I thought was a throwaway, useless moment came back much later on with an at-first confusing, then really chilling, payoff. Nothing was wasted.
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) used to be a decent writer, but when sales were bad and his life went to hell (I can't be more specific without spoilers, although that plot point is telegraphed in 87-point type well before being delivered) he switched to writing potboilers about "10 Spookiest Graveyards," "10 Spookiest Mansions," etc. He wants to round off his latest book on hotels by staying in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, in which a number of people have died mysteriously.
Samuel L Jackson (who rules all by virtue of simply existing) is the manager of the Dolphin, and he tries everything he can think of to talk Enslin out of it, including delivering (as only he can) the line used as this post's title. But no. Enslin doesn't believe in ghoulies, ghosties, or long-legged beasties that go bump in the night.
When the alarm clock - which he's already unplugged because the damn thing keeps playing "We've Only Just Begun" - resets itself into a 60-minute countdown, Enslin is about to discover exactly why nobody has ever lasted more than an hour in that room...
This was a movie that messes with your mind, which is so much more satisfying than one that just gives high-velocity anatomy lessons. (You know the ones: there's the spleen... that was a kidney flying by...) What is really fabulous is how subtle some of the things are: a sharp viewer will see things well before the protagonist does, such as one of the paintings changing. You've got your standard horror movie tropes, from bleeding walls to ghosts re-enacting their deaths, but there are a whole lot of new twists as well, delivered at the perfect pace. And the ending was, IMO, brilliant in its ambiguity.
1408. It's a number I associate more with Henry IV and Shakespeare than terror, but DAMN! That was one of the finest horror movies I've seen in a long time! A good horror movie, like a good romance novel, is much to be desired and so rarely found in execution. I was expecting it to fall apart or dumb down or (since it is based on King) go over the top.
1408 did none of these. It built slowly, but in a good director's hands, suspense is more terrifying than gore, and an early scene that I thought was a throwaway, useless moment came back much later on with an at-first confusing, then really chilling, payoff. Nothing was wasted.
Mike Enslin (John Cusack) used to be a decent writer, but when sales were bad and his life went to hell (I can't be more specific without spoilers, although that plot point is telegraphed in 87-point type well before being delivered) he switched to writing potboilers about "10 Spookiest Graveyards," "10 Spookiest Mansions," etc. He wants to round off his latest book on hotels by staying in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, in which a number of people have died mysteriously.
Samuel L Jackson (who rules all by virtue of simply existing) is the manager of the Dolphin, and he tries everything he can think of to talk Enslin out of it, including delivering (as only he can) the line used as this post's title. But no. Enslin doesn't believe in ghoulies, ghosties, or long-legged beasties that go bump in the night.
When the alarm clock - which he's already unplugged because the damn thing keeps playing "We've Only Just Begun" - resets itself into a 60-minute countdown, Enslin is about to discover exactly why nobody has ever lasted more than an hour in that room...
This was a movie that messes with your mind, which is so much more satisfying than one that just gives high-velocity anatomy lessons. (You know the ones: there's the spleen... that was a kidney flying by...) What is really fabulous is how subtle some of the things are: a sharp viewer will see things well before the protagonist does, such as one of the paintings changing. You've got your standard horror movie tropes, from bleeding walls to ghosts re-enacting their deaths, but there are a whole lot of new twists as well, delivered at the perfect pace. And the ending was, IMO, brilliant in its ambiguity.
