Let me begin with a few tips – this is not the movie for a first date (unless you are dating the Single White Female), a 3am viewing after hitting the 40oz’s all night, or an experiment to see what a flick would be like whilst riding high on the mean green. This is nothing short of a mental nerf gun fight, where the soft, loving nerf missiles have been replaced with bitey, angry, feral cats.

In role that will leave many old school John Cusack devotees wondering why he quit his job at the record store, we are taken on a ride through the world of haunted houses as Mike Enslin, a bitter, disassociated writer whose career has taken a turn for the worse after the tragic loss of he and his wife’s child. Add to this the break-up of his marriage and we have a lost and depressive soul. Reflecting the life he feels he now has, he roams from hotel to hotel, following the grim urban myths of death and torment that surround them. With the latest of scientific equipment he investigates each of these, dispelling hope and faith through his debunking of their ghost stories and in the process churning out a series of successful but unfulfilling books.

With the scene laid out for us, the story truly begins at the Dolphin hotel. In a role that could have been made for him, Samuel L Jackson eerily creeps his way through his performance as hotel manager Gerald Olin. With all the subliminal menace of a grainy Hammer horror movie from the 1950’s, Jackson creates a true sense of foreboding that makes its way through the veneer of the sardonic Enslin and settles with delightful discomfort over the viewer, unrelenting as it gathers momentum through to an extremely satisfying conclusion. It is rare in this age of compulsory twists in the last few minutes of horror movies that you are left feeling as though the ending was any more than a gratuitous ploy to wrap up a convoluted, disjointed storyline. Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander have done a commendable job of translating the short story of Stephen King into a very watchable film. I have sat through many an awful teleplay of Kings stories and rarely left feeling as pleased as I had at the end of this one.

As frightening as the storyline was the realisation this was going to be a one man show (Cusack) based almost entirely in Room 1408. Although it could be understandable to feel this way if you had had the arse-clenching frustration of sitting through Rose Red as I had, the production values and talent of Cusack are enough to stop this one sliding into a future midday movie timeslot. The room itself goes through some dramatic visual changes, and although it’s impossible to say too much more without spoiling the story, there is enough continuity and tiny amounts of wee inducing scary effects to keep most entertained.

1408 carries much of the same cinematography as ‘The Shining’, and indeed the storyline feels pretty similar at points, with the critics widely comparing it to the more famous piece from King. Fortunately the story settles into its own unique direction and proceeds to explore the ambiguities created in The Shining more concisely, producing arguably a more watchable film. Having said that, as well as Cusack does with a role fraught with more danger to his career than the room has for his character, his performance cannot be compared to the truly disturbing and brilliant one of Nicholson.

All in all, the doubt that is the central point of the story is carried beautifully throughout, and arguments could be well made for two completely different reasons for the ending. Brilliant!

With a couple of great cameos, a solid enough performance from Cusack, very effective production values and a whack screenplay translated from one of the century’s most highly regarded storytellers, 1408 sets itself apart from the flood of horror movies looking to supersede the decrepit selection from the early eighties at your local Video Ezy. Not a cinema classic, but by far one of the standouts in a genre that has had more than its fair share of turkeys recently.

Recommended.