1408

Mikael Hafstrom is probably best known in the UK as director of 2005’s thriller Derailed, which might lead you to assume that 1408 is his first foray into horror. However, he’s actually been a fairly long-term scare-meister from the small screen. 1408 is a based on a short story by Stephen King, which reads a lot like a precursor for horror staple The Shining. Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a writer of some talent who has for several years been squandering his talent mining the hack-ridden depths of the supernatural and superstitious.

An unbeliever himself, he travels to supposedly haunted hotels and writes them up in books headed straight for the bargain bin. In room 1408 of the Dolphin hotel in New York, he stumbles upon the real McCoy. Despite the flashy Hollywood effects, 1408 has a certain old school vibe to it. There are some mild psychological suggestions, the most effective being that he’s under the spell of some sort of hallucinogenic, but really the film’s horror is based on good old-fashioned shocks. Occasionally the effects feel a tad overdone, but there are also moments of that unnerving sense of the uncanny that are too rare in modern horror cinema. It may not be all that clever, but it’s good creepy fun.

Released 31st August 2007 by Dimension Films.

Written by Andrew Williams.