1408
Friday, August 17, 2007
1408
1408 is the reason why I dislike Stephen King. I've never liked any of his books, and though he is famous for writing horror and thrillers, I think that he works better when he is writing stories like The Green Mile or The Shawshank Redemption. There is something in his style of writing that I dislike with a burning passion. According to his autobiography, he writes without thinking too much about what course his story is going to follow, or how it is going to end. In fact, Stephen King starts with a brilliant idea, and then he works from that idea to an end that is elusive even to himself. The trouble with this style of writing is that the writer tends to wander into aspects of the plot that becomes seemingly pointless and boring. That was definitely the case when I picked up his Gunslinger series and got bored about halfway through the book. It is currently sitting on my shelves gathering dust with a bookmark still sticking out of page 275. The truth is, I've never liked Stephen King, and that is also the case for the movie adaptation of his short story, 1408.
1408 follows a very standard style of storytelling, especially the style of a horror story. The story begins with Mike Enslin, a horror story writer visiting the Dolphin Hotel in New York, after hearing about the legends of 1408. Apparently, more than fifty people have died from various reasons in that room, and he wanted to use the room as the basis of his new book. Gerald Olin, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is the hotel manager that tries different ways and means to persuade Mike from staying in that room, because nobody ever lasts more than an hour in that room - besides, he doesn't want to clean up the mess afterwards. However, being as stubborn as he is as a cynic, Mike made his way into the room 1408, and that is where the horror begins.
Before watching this film, I have done my homework while staying as far away as possible from the spoilers. From the reviews online, everything has pointed to only one direction: Not a great movie, but a good movie nonetheless. James Berardinelli even called it the best horror movie of the year, which is quite a claim since that man almost always has a high threshold in everything. I can't say that I had high hopes after reading those reviews, but it did get me interested in what the hell the room 1408 had to offer to me as a viewer. So I started watching the film half past one yesterday night, thinking that the time of the night and the month of the year may make my experience even more interesting. I was wrong.
The premise of the story has been visited a dozen times. A cynical man visits a haunted room, encounters creepy situations and becomes a believer at the end. We've all seen this sort of stories a dozen times, like the standard composition essays a teacher would read over the course of his or her career. The genre of horror has been dead for a while, and 1408 did little to revive the genre altogether. At least for me, it has been a while since any horror movie made an impression on me, or caused me to fear the shadows behind my bedroom door. I'm sure others who watch this film are going to be freaked out by the numerous cheap scares that the director employs throughout the film, but I was unmoved by most of his tricks, and was actually bored by the film halfway through.
The trailer of the film is not a misleading one, but it sure as hell gave away a lot of scary moments in the film - which to me weren't particularly scary at all. If you have watched the trailer a couple of times, it wouldn't be difficult to anticipate what is going to happen in the theater itself. After all, there are only so many tricks a director can use to freak the audience out, especially in the context of today's cinema. Directors nowadays are relying heavily on two things to earn their big bucks: Blood and gore, and cheap scares. By cheap scares, I am talking about corpses jumping out from the closet, the radio being turned on all of a sudden, more corpses jumping out of closets and stuff like that. Basically, these are the kind of thrill that directors employ, and to me they are very ephemeral in nature - and most of all, cheap. The latter is what the film uses throughout, and I must say that it becomes rather formulaic.
To say that this film is a horror movie would be an understatement, because this film is more like a psychological thriller more than anything. Throughout the film, the viewers are not given a definite idea as to whether the images Mike was seeing were real or not. Like the mini-Samuel L. Jackson in the fridge, and so many other aspects of the room itself, everything just seemed like an illusion on Mike's part. We see Mike's sanity slowly disintegrate on the screen, not really because of the ghosts that tried to grab him for no apparent reasons, but because of his own brain being messed up most of the time. Like I said before, most of the scares in the movie reply on the kind that jumps into your face, and it usually doesn't last longer than a split second in your head anyway. Everything from the corpse in the ventilation shaft, to the radio clock, to the strange masked man who looked like he came from the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all of them tried way too hard to be scary. I was sitting there in my bedroom at three in the morning, wanting to be scared out of my wits. But apparently, that didn't happen. I fell asleep like a baby soon afterwards.
This is also when Stephen King's writing problem appears on screen. I have never read the book 1408, but according to sources it seem to be a rather faithful adaptation. If that is true, then I can see why the story makes no sense at all. It cannot be blamed on the director or the screenwriters, but plainly on the author of the book itself. After being thrown with all the imagery and the ghosts, the viewers expect a sort of answer as to why they were there in the first place. For example, who was the man that tried to hit him with a...something...? And why did the people of 1408 try to kill themselves in the past? And who sent the postcard? A lot of the aspects weren't explained in proper in the film. One can argue that because it all happened in Mike's head, these things do not need to make much sense at all. However, the audience weren't given a clear idea as to whether or not the events did happen. And because the same formula is used throughout the film over and over, the director slapped himself in the face when he dumped the twist on the viewers, which became yet another failed plot line in the screenplay itself.
While I did not particularly enjoy the film, I must praise the fact that the film did have a brilliant first act. This part of the film really gave the rest of the movie its breadth, and set the tone for the movie as well. This aspect is greatly contributed by Samuel L. Jackson's creepy lines and brilliant acting, and that is very well matched up with John Cusack's dry humor on screen as well. The film is clearly divided into three acts. The first act involves Mike's life as an author, and his meeting with Gerald Olin in the hotel, followed by his warnings to the writer. The second act is about the time Mike spends in the room, still filled with his typical cynicisms and doubts. The third act is when everything unfolds, and you see Mike slowly going crazy throughout the last part of the movie. Unlike what the critics said about the film - the part about how the film remains a step ahead of the viewers instead of it being the other way round - I found myself to be ahead of the film almost all the time. I'm not trying to brag about it or anything, but I just simply found the plot to be predictable and boring. Nothing new or fascinating was used in the film to make it a little bit more creative and interesting, which was a great letdown on my part.
I am still waiting for a horror movie to freak me out these days, the way the Alien movies freaked me out as a child. I remember dreaming about those aliens for the next two weeks after watching the movies, and that has yet to happen to me over the past few years. The Asian horror movies market has done a better job in the genre than the West, and I must give praise to them for that alone. However, the problem with the Asian market - not just in movies but in everything else - is that they exploit a certain genre whenever it becomes popular. It all started with the Japanese film Ringu - or The Ring - which freaked a whole bunch of people out in the past when it was released. My sister was a poor victim of the movie, and became mortally afraid of videotapes after the film. She highly recommended the film to me, and asked me to take note of the part of the movie when Sadako crawls out of the well and through the television screen. I watched the television broadcast of the film as my sister screamed away into the night with her face hidden behind two layers of blankets, and I fell asleep right in front of the television. The whole movie was a boring drag, and the scene my sister mentioned was simply laughable. The same applied to another one of my sister's mortal fear - The Grudge. The same senseless and idiotic things happened in that movie, and the worst part was the stories in that movie didn't even make any sense at all. It was just about a ghost that dwells in the house, who kills people who stays in it simply because it was pissed off with the fact that her husband killed her in the past - yeah, right.
The other Asian films that followed in the footsteps of these two horror movies followed the same formula, even their ghosts look the same. Long hair, pale skin, usually with blood streaming out of their eyes and ears, and of course the white long gown with blood stains all over. You start to wonder how it is possible for ghosts to change clothes after their death, and why they can't appear in a more presentable wardrobe in the first place. As it moves down South from Japan, the quality of horror films become worse and worse. Taiwan and Hong Kong tried their hands on scary movies, and sort of succeeded with the film called The Eye. But the sequels that popped out from nowhere became either a very bad comedy, or an even worse horror movie. The same applied for Thailand produced horror movies and the worst of the lot - Singaporean produced horror films. The Maid was probably one of the worst horror films to ever reach the shores of my eyes in recent times, and I must say in relative to that movie, 1408 is an Oscar-worthy film from the beginning till the end.
I can't say that 1408 was a bad movie, because it wasn't. I don't suppose the film makers made the movie for it to be the greatest movie of all time. However, it did fail when it tried too hard to be the genre that it obviously isn't, and it should have been marketed as a psychological thriller instead. All the supposedly scary parts of the film fell flat to me, and it certainly did not live up to my expectations. I guess people these days are just easily scared, which must have been why it received an above average rating from most sources. But to me, a solid 6.5/10 and probably nothing more than that. I tried to be scared, I really did. But it just didn't work, sorry.
1408 is the reason why I dislike Stephen King. I've never liked any of his books, and though he is famous for writing horror and thrillers, I think that he works better when he is writing stories like The Green Mile or The Shawshank Redemption. There is something in his style of writing that I dislike with a burning passion. According to his autobiography, he writes without thinking too much about what course his story is going to follow, or how it is going to end. In fact, Stephen King starts with a brilliant idea, and then he works from that idea to an end that is elusive even to himself. The trouble with this style of writing is that the writer tends to wander into aspects of the plot that becomes seemingly pointless and boring. That was definitely the case when I picked up his Gunslinger series and got bored about halfway through the book. It is currently sitting on my shelves gathering dust with a bookmark still sticking out of page 275. The truth is, I've never liked Stephen King, and that is also the case for the movie adaptation of his short story, 1408.
1408 follows a very standard style of storytelling, especially the style of a horror story. The story begins with Mike Enslin, a horror story writer visiting the Dolphin Hotel in New York, after hearing about the legends of 1408. Apparently, more than fifty people have died from various reasons in that room, and he wanted to use the room as the basis of his new book. Gerald Olin, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is the hotel manager that tries different ways and means to persuade Mike from staying in that room, because nobody ever lasts more than an hour in that room - besides, he doesn't want to clean up the mess afterwards. However, being as stubborn as he is as a cynic, Mike made his way into the room 1408, and that is where the horror begins.
Before watching this film, I have done my homework while staying as far away as possible from the spoilers. From the reviews online, everything has pointed to only one direction: Not a great movie, but a good movie nonetheless. James Berardinelli even called it the best horror movie of the year, which is quite a claim since that man almost always has a high threshold in everything. I can't say that I had high hopes after reading those reviews, but it did get me interested in what the hell the room 1408 had to offer to me as a viewer. So I started watching the film half past one yesterday night, thinking that the time of the night and the month of the year may make my experience even more interesting. I was wrong.
The premise of the story has been visited a dozen times. A cynical man visits a haunted room, encounters creepy situations and becomes a believer at the end. We've all seen this sort of stories a dozen times, like the standard composition essays a teacher would read over the course of his or her career. The genre of horror has been dead for a while, and 1408 did little to revive the genre altogether. At least for me, it has been a while since any horror movie made an impression on me, or caused me to fear the shadows behind my bedroom door. I'm sure others who watch this film are going to be freaked out by the numerous cheap scares that the director employs throughout the film, but I was unmoved by most of his tricks, and was actually bored by the film halfway through.
The trailer of the film is not a misleading one, but it sure as hell gave away a lot of scary moments in the film - which to me weren't particularly scary at all. If you have watched the trailer a couple of times, it wouldn't be difficult to anticipate what is going to happen in the theater itself. After all, there are only so many tricks a director can use to freak the audience out, especially in the context of today's cinema. Directors nowadays are relying heavily on two things to earn their big bucks: Blood and gore, and cheap scares. By cheap scares, I am talking about corpses jumping out from the closet, the radio being turned on all of a sudden, more corpses jumping out of closets and stuff like that. Basically, these are the kind of thrill that directors employ, and to me they are very ephemeral in nature - and most of all, cheap. The latter is what the film uses throughout, and I must say that it becomes rather formulaic.
To say that this film is a horror movie would be an understatement, because this film is more like a psychological thriller more than anything. Throughout the film, the viewers are not given a definite idea as to whether the images Mike was seeing were real or not. Like the mini-Samuel L. Jackson in the fridge, and so many other aspects of the room itself, everything just seemed like an illusion on Mike's part. We see Mike's sanity slowly disintegrate on the screen, not really because of the ghosts that tried to grab him for no apparent reasons, but because of his own brain being messed up most of the time. Like I said before, most of the scares in the movie reply on the kind that jumps into your face, and it usually doesn't last longer than a split second in your head anyway. Everything from the corpse in the ventilation shaft, to the radio clock, to the strange masked man who looked like he came from the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all of them tried way too hard to be scary. I was sitting there in my bedroom at three in the morning, wanting to be scared out of my wits. But apparently, that didn't happen. I fell asleep like a baby soon afterwards.
This is also when Stephen King's writing problem appears on screen. I have never read the book 1408, but according to sources it seem to be a rather faithful adaptation. If that is true, then I can see why the story makes no sense at all. It cannot be blamed on the director or the screenwriters, but plainly on the author of the book itself. After being thrown with all the imagery and the ghosts, the viewers expect a sort of answer as to why they were there in the first place. For example, who was the man that tried to hit him with a...something...? And why did the people of 1408 try to kill themselves in the past? And who sent the postcard? A lot of the aspects weren't explained in proper in the film. One can argue that because it all happened in Mike's head, these things do not need to make much sense at all. However, the audience weren't given a clear idea as to whether or not the events did happen. And because the same formula is used throughout the film over and over, the director slapped himself in the face when he dumped the twist on the viewers, which became yet another failed plot line in the screenplay itself.
While I did not particularly enjoy the film, I must praise the fact that the film did have a brilliant first act. This part of the film really gave the rest of the movie its breadth, and set the tone for the movie as well. This aspect is greatly contributed by Samuel L. Jackson's creepy lines and brilliant acting, and that is very well matched up with John Cusack's dry humor on screen as well. The film is clearly divided into three acts. The first act involves Mike's life as an author, and his meeting with Gerald Olin in the hotel, followed by his warnings to the writer. The second act is about the time Mike spends in the room, still filled with his typical cynicisms and doubts. The third act is when everything unfolds, and you see Mike slowly going crazy throughout the last part of the movie. Unlike what the critics said about the film - the part about how the film remains a step ahead of the viewers instead of it being the other way round - I found myself to be ahead of the film almost all the time. I'm not trying to brag about it or anything, but I just simply found the plot to be predictable and boring. Nothing new or fascinating was used in the film to make it a little bit more creative and interesting, which was a great letdown on my part.
I am still waiting for a horror movie to freak me out these days, the way the Alien movies freaked me out as a child. I remember dreaming about those aliens for the next two weeks after watching the movies, and that has yet to happen to me over the past few years. The Asian horror movies market has done a better job in the genre than the West, and I must give praise to them for that alone. However, the problem with the Asian market - not just in movies but in everything else - is that they exploit a certain genre whenever it becomes popular. It all started with the Japanese film Ringu - or The Ring - which freaked a whole bunch of people out in the past when it was released. My sister was a poor victim of the movie, and became mortally afraid of videotapes after the film. She highly recommended the film to me, and asked me to take note of the part of the movie when Sadako crawls out of the well and through the television screen. I watched the television broadcast of the film as my sister screamed away into the night with her face hidden behind two layers of blankets, and I fell asleep right in front of the television. The whole movie was a boring drag, and the scene my sister mentioned was simply laughable. The same applied to another one of my sister's mortal fear - The Grudge. The same senseless and idiotic things happened in that movie, and the worst part was the stories in that movie didn't even make any sense at all. It was just about a ghost that dwells in the house, who kills people who stays in it simply because it was pissed off with the fact that her husband killed her in the past - yeah, right.
The other Asian films that followed in the footsteps of these two horror movies followed the same formula, even their ghosts look the same. Long hair, pale skin, usually with blood streaming out of their eyes and ears, and of course the white long gown with blood stains all over. You start to wonder how it is possible for ghosts to change clothes after their death, and why they can't appear in a more presentable wardrobe in the first place. As it moves down South from Japan, the quality of horror films become worse and worse. Taiwan and Hong Kong tried their hands on scary movies, and sort of succeeded with the film called The Eye. But the sequels that popped out from nowhere became either a very bad comedy, or an even worse horror movie. The same applied for Thailand produced horror movies and the worst of the lot - Singaporean produced horror films. The Maid was probably one of the worst horror films to ever reach the shores of my eyes in recent times, and I must say in relative to that movie, 1408 is an Oscar-worthy film from the beginning till the end.
I can't say that 1408 was a bad movie, because it wasn't. I don't suppose the film makers made the movie for it to be the greatest movie of all time. However, it did fail when it tried too hard to be the genre that it obviously isn't, and it should have been marketed as a psychological thriller instead. All the supposedly scary parts of the film fell flat to me, and it certainly did not live up to my expectations. I guess people these days are just easily scared, which must have been why it received an above average rating from most sources. But to me, a solid 6.5/10 and probably nothing more than that. I tried to be scared, I really did. But it just didn't work, sorry.
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