1408

Liz and I saw 1408 tonight. It's a PG-13 thriller about an author who drives around seeking haunted places to write about. At this point in his life he's seeking out haunted hotel rooms. He spends the night in them and then gives a 1-10 rating on scariness measured in skulls. He doesn't seem to really get scared by anything until he heads to New York and visits the Dolphin hotel. The hotel manager is played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. Good choice for the role. Jackson definitely tries to get Michael (John Cusack) to not stay in the room, but then there wouldn't be a movie, right? So at first the room isn't scary at all. It's just a normal room. Everybody at the hotel seems scared to death to step one foot through the door. Then weird things start happening. Stuff gets moved around, things go back to their original state, etc. Then Cusack starts seeing things, gets freaked out, hurts his hand, and wants out of the room. Too bad though. The room doesn't want to let him go. Now we enter the part where I got bored. You see, I'm not really into scary movies and this movie wasn't even scary. One thing I'll give this movie is that it didn't resort to gore in an effort to keep the audience interested. If you didn't know, horror movies fall back on gore and most other movies fall back on sex and nudity. The really special ones include both - i.e. Hostel, etc. So, like I said, this movie didn't fall back on blood and guts to scare us. I think this could be seen as both a positive and a negative. Positive because they tried to be a good movie. Negative because it wasn't really scary, but the PG-13 rating was kept. Any more gruesomeness and it most likely would have been rated R. So, it got into this loop cycle thing where Cusack could not leave the room. He desperately wanted to, but "The Room" said, "No." This is where I really got bored. There's even a "tricky" ending where we don't really know if he's dead or alive; in the room or out of it. One thing is for sure though. Cusack's character isn't the only one being affected by the room in the end. Redeemable factors would include the acting. Even though I love John Cusack's acting, he kinda does mostly the same kind of movies. If you don't know what I'm talking about check out Serendipity, America's Sweethearts, High Fidelity, Say Anything and Grosse Point Blank. Now you might say, "But wait, he's done so many other movies." This is true. He has. However, with Say Anything being one of his most prominent roles, Liz and I decided this, that is what John Cusack is remembered for. He has been branching out though, I think this is definitely one of those branch-out movies. Even though I really liked Cusack's acting, I still gave this one a 2/5 on Netflix. It's kinda like the movie Monster with Charlize Theron. I really did not like the movie but it had some amazing acting done by Theron. So I'd say this one could be worth watching, but if you get bored by the scary movies you might feel like I did about it.