1408: Difference between revisions

'''Gerald Olin''' }}

 

 

Cusack plays horror writer Mike Enslin, who specializes in investigating supposedly haunted houses and other sites of supernatural activity, which he has documented previously in books like ''Ten Haunted Graveyards'' and ''Ten Haunted Mansions''. However, these investigations have yet to bear fruit in the form of confirmable sightings, leaving him pessimistic and jaded. Through an anonymous recommendation, Enslin learns about the Dolphin Hotel, in which no one has been able to stay even a single night (or even one hour) in one particular room - the eponymous 1408. According to his research, everyone who tries has committed suicide or died from anything from heart attacks to drowning. The manager, Gerald Olin, tries to warn him away from staying in that room, to no avail; Enslin is unconvinced by his warnings and tales, preferring to see things for himself. After all, [[Tempting Fate|what's the worst that could happen?]]

* [[Balcony Escape]]: Mike tries, and fails as the other windows all disappear from the wall.

* [[Big No]]: Kind of.

* [[Cassette Craze]]: Enslin keeps his notes on a portable tape recorder. In the original short story he states that he found that when camping in graveyards, cassettes were easier to use than paper.

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]:

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: The Room itself, though this does nothing to absolve it of its [[Complete Monster]] status.

{{quote| '''Front Desk Clerk{{spoiler|!The Room}}''': [[Fate Worse Than Death|You can choose to repeat this hour over and over again,]] [[Driven to Suicide|or you can take advantage of our express checkout system.]]}}

** {{spoiler|Enslin}} in the director's cut.

** {{spoiler|The room itself}} in both cuts.

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: {{spoiler|See [[Fate Worse Than Death]].}}

* [[Earn Your Happy Ending|Earn Your ]][[Bittersweet Ending]]: Boy, did Enslin earn it.

{{quote| "At least [ghosts] were human once, but that thing...that ''thing''..."}}

:: This arguably makes the movie even harder to watch. You desperately want ''something'' to hate for everything that's happening to Enslin, but hating a room is like, well, shouting at a minifridge. The good thing about this is that you're relieved that it's just this ''one'' room....

* [[It Has Only Just Begun]]: Featuring The Carpenters as the voice of unfathomable evil.

* [[It Won't Turn Off]]: The clock radio, which keeps counting down even after Enslin pulls out the plug.

** In a "blink and you miss it" foreshadowing, when the post office is being torn down to reveal the room, one of the bricks on the wall has "Burn it alive" written on it.

* [[Kubrick Stare]]: Mike at the end

* [[Pseudopod]]: The horror elements are explained in "The Pseudopod Autopsy: Stephen King’s 1408"

* [[Psychological Torment Zone]]

* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: Enslin receives one {{spoiler|from his minifridge.}}

* [[Room 101|Room 1408]]

** There's a small blink-and-you-miss-it ([[Easter Egg|Seriously, the pause button will be required]]) reference to the original short story. When Enslin is walking down the hall to the room for the first time, he is shuffling through his notes. On one page is a line from the original short story from when Enslin first begins to feel the affects from the room.

{{quote| "My brother was actually eaten by wolves one winter on the Connecticut Turnpike."}}

** After the climax and Enslin's escape, he starts seeing the ghosts of those trapped in 1408, including while having lunch in a restaurant in a frame-for-frame shout out to the ending of [[Misery]]. {{spoiler|Then he finds out he's not escaped after all.}}

* [[Snow Means Cold]]: When it gets freezing in the room, the floor is covered with a layer of snow. The sprinklers were on for awhile, but it should have generated some ice, not snow. But ofcourse the room's [[Reality Warper]] nature can explain such little details.

** To be fair, any reasonable scientist would have noticed SOMETHING odd about the massive number of fatalities.

* [[Take a Third Option]]

* [[Tempting Fate]]: As mentioned in the description above, Enslin insisted on staying in the room.

* [[That Was Not a Dream]]: {{spoiler|1408 is such a bastard that it lets Mike think he'd been out for a week or more before informing him, nope, you're still here}}.

** It came out on the 22nd in 2007. 2+2+2+0+0+7=13.

* [[Through the Eyes of Madness]]

* [[Took a Level In Badass]]: Takes effect once {{spoiler|the voice on the phone offers Enslin the express checkout and he acts completely nonchalant for the rest of the film, such as relaxing on the couch as the place is set on fire}}.

* [[Trash the Set]]: {{spoiler|After Mike seems to have escaped from 1408 and lived a week or so of his normal life, he goes to the post office to deliver a letter, and suddenly all the employees start destroying the place, to reveal 1408 beneath it.}}