Are Fruits Treated With Sulfur Bad For You

NOT into that room

1408 (1408 - USA 2007) directed by Mikael Hafstrom
1408 (Trailer)

SHEET FILM

one time, Mike Enslin (John Cusack) was a talented young writer with a bright future ahead. His life changed when, following the death of his daughter (devoured by an incurable disease) and the subsequent collapse of his marriage, his career as a writer takes a totally unexpected turn. From a promising young fiction, Mike is quite successful in becoming an author of essays, focusing on issues horrorifiche. Although a prolific writer and loved by fans of the genre, Mike Enslin has developed a deep skepticism towards all what usually is made to fall into the category of "paranormal", coming to feel a certain cynical pleasure in the lie to all the misrepresentations and fraud, hiding behind such phenomena.

One day, Mike receives an anonymous postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York, one of the most famous and luxurious hotels in the Big Apple. In the message, the writer is asked not to enter room 1408. Heedless of the warning, Mike accepted the unique challenge of being able to draw from that experience convinced the material needed for a new book.

coupling in hotel, is informed by the director Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) of the terrifying reputation that surrounds the notorious room 1408. Over the years, an incredible number of people have lost their lives, inside the room, in the most absurd and brutal. Most people, according to the testimony of the director, usually can not spend more than an hour in the room, without fleeing in panic.

Inspired by what he interprets as an attack on the role of "unmasking the deceptions," Enslin convinces the reluctant director Olin to get the keys of the haunted room, to spend a night in room 1408. ..

The conditions were all there, in order to achieve something more than a (albeit successful) honest and straightforward film version, of yet another literary work of Stephen King. Based on the short story, which appears in the anthology Everything's Eventual "," 1408 "despite the great response from the public (it was one of the most profitable film of 2007) and criticism (for many, the best horror film, released THAT 'year) is a film that, in my humble opinion, it can be said to be only partially successful. Despite the director, precise and careful, the Swedish Mikael Hafstrom (his "Evil - The rebel "received in 2003 a nomination Oscar for best foreign film) and the interpretation of a great John Cusack, perfect in the role of the cynical and disillusioned protagonist, supported by a "Mephisto" Samuel L. Jackson, the film is not very different from those that are the classic canons of traditional filmic transposition of the works of so-called " master of post-literate prose."

Although the film works quite well, observed from this angle, it seems to me frankly state this too, as did many critics as one of the most successful films, including those taken from King. Leaving aside (for obvious reasons) a film like "The Shining", as we can only compare "1408" in works like "Carrie, the eyes of Satan," "The Dead Zone," "Christine, the infernal machine" "Stand By Me - I remember one summer," "Misery", but also to the same "The Mist," released in the same year (that is, the best horror film of 2007, if not the last two decades! )?

However, the assumptions, as I mentioned before, everyone was there to give the viewer a cinematic experience slightly more significant. Credit is due to the film, for example, the merit of the suggestions have skillfully dodged most gruesome and hateful (as abused) tendency of some horror movies, free to "twist", now so overused and predictable from compel us to jump from his chair to practice, or mere solidarity with the authors.

The very idea of \u200b\u200bthe room as a place actually (and figuratively) locked, where the protagonist can not escape the ghosts of his past and is necessarily forced to come to terms, for the first time, with their deep and painful meaning of guilt (no idea borrowed from the original story, if I remember correctly), could be developed in a more original and far less simplistic.

Small curiosity: the name "Dolphin Hotel" was selected by Stephen King as a clear homage to the Dolphin Hotel, the legendary hotel in Sapporo in the snow in Hokkaido, in this "In the name of the sheep," the cult novel by Haruki Murakami and its ideal result "Dance, Dance, Dance."

MEISTER STEINER SAYS: 5.5