1408

Watched 1408 on Star Movies on Sunday. Though it was a Sunday night when I am supposed to fall back to my weekday work routine (by going early to sleep so that I wake up early on Monday and not be late for office) , this compelling movie forced me to wake up till 1 a.m in the night in what happened to be one of the best horror movie I have ever seen...

The plot unfolds with Mike Enslin (John Cusack) who is a writer writing in the genre of the ghost and paranormal... He has a panache for debunking supernatural occurrences after the untimely death of his daughter Katie.

After hearing from people the rumour of a hunted room numbered 1408 in the famous Dolphin Hotel in New York, he decides to visit the hotel armed with all legal know-how of securing the particular room as it was also heard that the hotel management never rents out that particular room to anybody. The manager of the hotel, is a man who has seen enough death and destruction in that room to allow anybody to even step in to it and tries out all trick in the book to ensure Enslin does not check in to that particular room. Adeptly portrayed by the seasoned Samuel L. Jackson the whole negotiation was brilliantly done with Jackson trying to dissuade Cussack in to checking in to that room but ultimately gives in to Cussack's adamant stand and also to the fear of a legal backlash on denying a guest a room when it is available...

After Enslin checks in the movie goes in to a total roller coaster ride as Cussack starts hearing noise, sees ghostly apparition, blood curdling imagery which sends chill down the spine.. My best moments are when he tries to rip off the radio from the plug (when it starts to play on its own) and even then the radio continues to play on...the other being when Enslin cries out to somebody on the front building to help him out and sees a person like him standing there and mimicking him in what happens to be a mirror image replication of his own activity..Among all such bizarre happening is the specter of him meeting with his father who is long dead and meeting his dead daughter who cries out "Daddy, Daddy" to him, he holds her in his arm and ultimately Katie dies in his arms yet again and suddenly turns in to dust..


After all the various forms of horror which seems to go on and on, Enslin decides to break this cycle by setting fire with the help of the Cognac he had with him and is rescued by the fire fighting team... He recovers and completes the novel on his recent experience.. Suddenly his wife Lilly finds and hands him a bag containing the remnants of his possession from the fire tragedy... A voice recorder he had with him...And he decides to play it..

In the entire movie every now and then Enslin would take a swig of the Cognac handed to him by the hotel manager and suddenly he remembers that the hotel manager may have mixed some chemical with some hallucinating substance.. I think that was the master piece as I am sure most of the audience (myself included) believed the same till the end...

Coming back to the voice recorder, on being played it plays out his various delirious conversation in to the recorder and his attempt to stay sane in that room in a time which seemed to be a distant past for him now.....

thats when we all hear the voice of his daughter Katie from the voice recorder which calls out "Daddy, Daddy"...

And the movie ends with deathly horror written all over the couple's face....

Best horror movie recommended over the week end and ensure that somebody is with you and you are not alone.... Not surely for the faint hearted...