1408

Deliverance

Anyones critique on this film? Saw it the other day, I liked the ending and Cusak did a damn good job. I think the camera work let the film down really. The story and emotion captured and portrayed by Cusak was great. I also think the trailer gave a wrong impression of what the movie and story was really about. I really like this film having watched it in a purely psychological way, great King stuff.
Why can't some film makers make King stories into movies in the way they are meant? After all Shawshank was a masterpiece. I don't know, is the 'King' just to hard to visualise?

Basq

Yep.. there has been a few threads on this. My opinion on it from a previous review thread:

Watched this last night... quite an enjoyable film.

Very scary for a PG film (in the States anyways). No real scenes of blood and guts - just intense psychological scares.

One poor point about it was it had a bit too many endings...

what i mean is there was too many moments in the film where there was a resolution or a fade-to-black, only for the film to get going again soon after.

Cusack was great as always. Samuel L Jackson was.... barely seen!

Though this will be another one film to divide audiences (similar to Cusack's horror/thriller 'Identity'), people will either really enjoy the film or loathe it. There will be no in-between.

For me, it was more chilling than most of the R-rated blood-and-gore fests out there.

I'd give it a solid 8 / 10.

Regarding King's films, it's not that King's book are hard to visualise. It's that most of his books are made into inferior mini-series or given to poor directors.

Deliverance

basquille wrote:

Yep.. there has been a few threads on this. My opinion on it from a previous review thread:



Regarding King's films, it's not that King's book are hard to visualise. It's that most of his books are made into inferior mini-series or given to poor directors.

Totally agree about inferior directors, it seems hit and miss. The impression I got from 1408 at the end, after a dissapointed expectation of scary horror stuff suggested in the trailer, was that it was actually a great film with great acting from Cusak. Maybe if they promoted it differently ie: not a horror more of a psychological thriller it would have been more satisfying for some of the 'missing audience'.

To me I got this at the end and liked it as such, but comments from the audience that I heard was like they were in the wrong film as they expressed that 'That wasn't a bit scary'. King maybe a genious at writing but his control over his portrayed artistry is poor at best. Maybe he should get better agents?

Ps: along with the Shawshank as a proof in point is 'Stand by me', the only two films I can think of that portray his stories in a timeless deserved way.

Snake Plisken

Yeah but this scared the crap out of me, I'm a big King fan and read all his books, people have mad better efforts with regards to his non-horror books like Shawshank, The green Mile Stand by me for example, of the horror adaptations the only ones that really work in scaring the crap out of me like the books do are Salems Lot (surprisingly a mini-tv series), The Shining and now 1408. All the rest of his horror output has been terrible. I have high hopes that Frank Darabont will add to my list with his adaptation of The Mist he has done excellent justice to both the Green Mile and Shawshank so fingers crossed. I have more worries about the TV mini series of The Talisman. I also hope Eli Roth if he does Cell will do that novel justice. And I do prey that one day they give The Dark Tower series of books to either Frank Darabont or if the rumours that appeared all over the net in Feb of this year JJ Abrams might make it at some stage. Abrams is a big King fan and you can find references throughout Lost, also King is also a big fan of Lost, I could see this work out well. Anyway 1408 is a great psychological thriller that has some really great scares in it and does a decent job with a King Horror story.

Snake

JackKelly

Firstly, I love Stephan King, and I can't wait for the Mist, as it's a story I read as a child (It was in "The Skelaton Crew" I think?").The Shining scared me to bits,in general I'm easily freaked out and I was really looking foward to this film.

I wasn't at all impressed with 1408. The impression I got was that the room was "alive", and forced it's occupants to commit suicide by making them relive their worst fears/experiences etc, yet there is no history or information behind the room, what exactly it is, where it started etc.
Yes, we hear about the countless people who have died in the room, and see a small number of them throughout the film (again, with minimal backstory) but it all seemed a bit all over the place to me. I don't think I was properly scared once, as most of the jumpy frights are in the trailer.

Necronomicon

I really liked it. One of few horrors recently that has really made my hair stand on end rather than depend on cheap scares - I guess that's what happens when your source material is a Stephen King book.

The scene where he's waving for help and a guy appears behind his mirror image across the way was fantastic

Towards the end I was shaking my head

because I thought it was going to be botched by a poor ending - when he 'woke up' in hospital I thought to myself, surely they're not going for the "it's all a dream" angle.

Thankfully, it was crisis averted

when he woke back up in the room. However, the real ending was also somewhat of a let down and seemed a bit rushed with the whole tape-recorder thing.

Still, very enjoyable and I'll probably buy it when it comes out.
4/5

Deliverance

Stephen King+ Frank Darabont great combination. The Mist? I don't remember that one. But I do remember the long walk? F'ing great story bastardised by Hollywood into a shiny futuristic gameshow starring Arnie.

The ending of 1408 in a way confuses me as it could be construed that

Samuel jackson manipulated the whole demise of the room by sending the postcard and then giving Cusak the means with which to destroy the room. Remember the chalk writing on the wall (Burn me alive) and the strong emphasis throughout on the highly flammable drink?

The ending was brilliant I have to say, but on hindsight it distracts from the story itself and distracts the viewer from the many unanswered questions about the nature of the room itself. It leaves the reader / viewer with so many questions, but at the same time leaves them with their own view in a psychological way. Typical King work, brilliant in my opinion.

.

TerrorFirmer

Thought it was quite good. Somewhat difference to the short story but nothing too drastic....

jobonar

Going to see this tonight. Really looking forward to seeing it, have heard good things about it

Petey2006

Not a bad film. Great performance by Cusack. Review here

Mossy Monk

Watched it last night. Thought it was great. Wasn't really one of the fright films, moreso a play on the mind. Loved the end of it.

djkeogh

Saw it last night myself. Found it to be entertaining but not great. Excellent performance by Cusack tho.

jobonar

djkeogh wrote:

Saw it last night myself. Found it to be entertaining but not great. Excellent performance by Cusack tho.

^^ felt the exact same. Was looking forward to it but it wasn't as good as i thought it was going to be.

I went to see it Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not the best King adaptation but certainly no where near the worst.

spacecoyote

Deliverance wrote:

Stephen King+ Frank Darabont great combination. The Mist? I don't remember that one. But I do remember the long walk? F'ing great story bastardised by Hollywood into a shiny futuristic gameshow starring Arnie.

Well it was actually the Running Man that was bastardised, not the long walk...but they were in the same 4 story novel if i remember correctly...and hey Arnie's Running Man was nice senseless violent fun!!!

senordingdong

I enjoyed it but was left dissapointed by a few aspects. A few parts of it were 'blatent Stephen King' and jsut stank of re-hashes from older stories, I didn't understand the ending and there were some important aspects of the story that were left out for some reason.
Can anybody explain the ending to me?
Whatsmore there is to be na alternate ending with the dvd because the original was a huge dissapointment in the states too.

jobonar

senordingdong wrote:

I enjoyed it but was left dissapointed by a few aspects. A few parts of it were 'blatent Stephen King' and jsut stank of re-hashes from older stories, I didn't understand the ending and there were some important aspects of the story that were left out for some reason.
Can anybody explain the ending to me?
Whatsmore there is to be na alternate ending with the dvd because the original was a huge dissapointment in the states too.

would like to see the alternate ending. i wonder why the current ending was chosen? it was a bit of a let down.

O.P.H

Dont know how to do the spoiler thingy so dont read if you havent seen movie -


Im sorry but I thought it was awful. The only time I was scared was in those 'jump' moments and its no great shakes to do them well. Because the film was just SO ficticious thats where it lost me, stopped being scary after it just lost the plot with surreal unexplainable happenings - the snow, the water. Any possiblities as to why all this happend, none of them could have been interesting - dream, drugged, the room is actually evil, all of these outcomes are cliched so the film was doomed from the get go for me. I would have liked if they could have made it more like the game with Micheal Douglas and that all of the events in the room were controled be people and in the end it would have been someone getting revenge on him or something like that. Felt like a waste of 2 hours.

Deliverance

spacecoyote wrote:

Well it was actually the Running Man that was bastardised, not the long walk...but they were in the same 4 story novel if i remember correctly...and hey Arnie's Running Man was nice senseless violent fun!!!

Havn't read that book in a while, was the Running Man a seperate story to the long walk? I thought the long walk was a futuristic game show covered by the media as entertainment for a sadistic public. I thought this story was adapted into the 'Running man' which was a futuristic gameshow covered by the media for a sadistic public.

Ah I just looked it up we are both right he wrote the story The Running Man under the pseodonym 'Bachman', and the Long Walk he wrote as himself, both the same story under different names. I wonder why he wrote under a pseodonym in the first place, I read that he is often asked this but never really gives a clear answer. Maybe a confidence thing initially?

Snake Plisken

OPH its a horror story its I'd describe as a supernatural thriller and I can't see how u can compare it to the game which I found totally unbelievable, the short story of room 1408 never explains either why the room is evil. It also has a very downbeat ending, but I thought the movie ending actually worked very well. I will be interested to see if the alternative ending sticks to the short story ending. Damn that Carpenters song creeped me out

Snake

Deliverance

O.P.H wrote:

Dont know how to do the spoiler thingy so dont read if you havent seen movie -


Im sorry but I thought it was awful. The only time I was scared was in those 'jump' moments and its no great shakes to do them well. Because the film was just SO ficticious thats where it lost me, stopped being scary after it just lost the plot with surreal unexplainable happenings - the snow, the water. Any possiblities as to why all this happend, none of them could have been interesting - dream, drugged, the room is actually evil, all of these outcomes are cliched so the film was doomed from the get go for me. I would have liked if they could have made it more like the game with Micheal Douglas and that all of the events in the room were controled be people and in the end it would have been someone getting revenge on him or something like that. Felt like a waste of 2 hours.

The game with Douglas was absolute ****e. There was no way at the end that they could have predicted him falling off the roof at that particular point onto a big stuntman cushion through fall guy sugar glass.

Kings stuff is outside the Hollywood genre and ridiculousness, often filmmakers portray his work terribly. But in this case as the story goes, I think they did rather well, it is as someone else mentioned a psychological thriller.

The mainstay of the story is that it is about a father who has lost a beloved child, what ensues is his mental battle to deal with the loss. This is portrayed with his battle for his sanity in the room, to me the room was his mind made real, it was so good that at one point his denial was destroyed by his apparent escape which was not real, which is what is to be expected from a person under so much denial and stress, he was forced to deal with it by his return to the room. The return I think was brilliantly done with the destruction of his false reality by sledgehammers and general destruction of his perceived reality.

I think this whole film was done brilliantly and this issue is even dealt with by the fan who enquires of the author about his one good book which was so believable about his loss of the said child, which he denied. The man was in denial about the loss of his child. To me I felt that you lived his horror in his mind in a tangible sense by the room.

There can be no real answers for a parent who had lost a child, this film pyschologically addressed this very well and the ending made it real. Remember the quote by Cusak, "It's not real, It is only more real than it seems", this statement said volumes about the mindstate of the grieving dad.

This is a masterpiece of a film and story combined and deserves cult status at least. I think many people won't get it. But I for one did.

~Rebel~

Deliverance wrote:

I think this whole film was done brilliantly and this issue is even dealt with by the fan who enquires of the author about his one good book which was so believable about his loss of the said child, which he denied. The man was in denial about the loss of his child.

The fan at the book signing wasn't enquiring about

the death of his child, she was asking whether the relationship between father and son in his book was real. This i assume is why his father appeared in the room. Also, at the end his wife says she thinks he's ready to write about the loss of their daughter, which shows he hadn't already.

Just wasn't gone on this movie to be honest, i absolutely loved the first 50mins or so but IMO the

"escape"

was far too drawn out and killed the momentum which never picked up again. It seems a lot of the better reviews were by people who read the short story so i must give it a look. I recognise that its as much a psychological thriller as a horror, but after the aforementioned interlude, it never really captured me again like it had for the first half.

O.P.H

Again I don't know how to do the spoiler thing so don't read this if you havent seen the film

Deliverance wrote:

This is a masterpiece of a film and story combined and deserves cult status at least. I think many people won't get it. But I for one did.

Gimme a break, The Shinning is a sci-fi horror masterpiece, this is just a bull**** cliche one, I don't care if King wrote it.
Ok so when your sitting there watching this film and all reality as just walked out the door in a rediculous way and we are into one of those completely off the wall dreams of his or wathever the hell is goin on, for examlpe the sledgehammer seen, your telling me that your sittin in your chair going "omg this is amazing, those sledgehammers are in fact not just ripping dowe those wall but actually the walls a his denial, omg im gonna cry". NO NO NO. This is what you did when you went home and wrote your composition of English homework the next day. You don't want to defend this film on the aspect of the psychological merits or him as a Dad etc because this film never gave you a proper background of him as a person or a Dad and when all of that jazz was going on with him and his daughter you did'nt give a dam because the director never made you give a dam up to that point. Just becasue you intelectualised the crap out of this film and figured out this means this etc its still dosent make the film great, not even as a no brainer horror because it waent even scary. It starts out well with a good build up to the room, I was quite drawn in for the first 45 mins, but them it goes cliche with all the off the wall completely unexplainable wacky crap and ends extremely cliche with Sammy boy in his chair saying "well done Mrs Blah Blah, well done" and that tape thing, I laughed my ass off when that happend. This film will be forgoten about very soon.

Deliverance

O.P.H wrote:

Again I don't know how to do the spoiler thing so don't read this if you havent seen the film



Gimme a break, The Shinning is a sci-fi horror masterpiece, this is just a bull**** cliche one, I don't care if King wrote it.
Ok so when your sitting there watching this film and all reality as just walked out the door in a rediculous way and we are into one of those completely off the wall dreams of his or wathever the hell is goin on, for examlpe the sledgehammer seen, your telling me that your sittin in your chair going "omg this is amazing, those sledgehammers are in fact not just ripping dowe those wall but actually the walls a his denial, omg im gonna cry". NO NO NO. This is what you did when you went home and wrote your composition of English homework the next day. You don't want to defend this film on the aspect of the psychological merits or him as a Dad etc because this film never gave you a proper background of him as a person or a Dad and when all of that jazz was going on with him and his daughter you did'nt give a dam because the director never made you give a dam up to that point. Just becasue you intelectualised the crap out of this film and figured out this means this etc its still dosent make the film great, not even as a no brainer horror because it waent even scary. It starts out well with a good build up to the room, I was quite drawn in for the first 45 mins, but them it goes cliche with all the off the wall completely unexplainable wacky crap and ends extremely cliche with Sammy boy in his chair saying "well done Mrs Blah Blah, well done" and that tape thing, I laughed my ass off when that happend. This film will be forgoten about very soon.

I haven't seen 'the shinning'. Being kicked in the shins does hurt but I wouldn't consider it horror.

Snake Plisken

@ OPH what is this movie the Shinning you talk about? It seems to be a sci-fi horror masterpiece, can't seem to find it on imdb???? If you actually mean the Shining can you please point out the sci-fi elements in that movie?
I would recommend you pick up Everything's eventual the compliation that includes the SK story this is based on, some big differences between the book and the movie, but I supposed they had to flesh out the story for the movie.

Snake

O.P.H

Oops oops oops, my bad The Shining, touché Deliverance, very funny. Anyway the term sci-fi is a very broad term and there are many parts of The Shining that can easily be deemed sci-fi but I'm not goin gettin into semantics too much - THE SHINING SPOILER (the very end his face is on that picture from the 40's) etc etc

Deliverance

Snake Plisken wrote:

@ OPH what is this movie the Shinning you talk about? It seems to be a sci-fi horror masterpiece, can't seem to find it on imdb???? If you actually mean the Shining can you please point out the sci-fi elements in that movie?
I would recommend you pick up Everything's eventual the compliation that includes the SK story this is based on, some big differences between the book and the movie, but I supposed they had to flesh out the story for the movie.

Snake

The shinning is a modern day work of humour, based on Kings 'Shining', Not many people have heard of it. Critics desribe it as a complete farce with no real merit on the original story. Though many folks seem to find time to compare. Ps I'm taking the P.

Deliverance

O.P.H wrote:

Oops oops oops, my bad The Shining, touché Deliverance, very funny. Anyway the term sci-fi is a very broad term and there are many parts of The Shining that can easily be deemed sci-fi but I'm not goin gettin into semantics too much - THE SHINING SPOILER (the very end his face is on that picture from the 40's) etc etc

I loved that movie, Nicholson made it. The frozen end was good. The story itself was empty and destructive and final in a direct way. But the content sticks in my mind. King stuff I guess.
Maybe there should be a thread based on Kings work for the fans and appreciatives?

Snake Plisken

Deliverance wrote:

I loved that movie, Nicholson made it. The frozen end was good. The story itself was empty and destructive and final in a direct way. But the content sticks in my mind. King stuff I guess.
Maybe there should be a thread based on Kings work for the fans and appreciatives?

Well u see the problem with a thread of King adaptations you have to split it out between his horror works and his more less fantasy work.
If you look at his work that is based in reality, you will see that there have been great adaptations to film Shawshank, Misery, Stand by me and The Green Mile, on the horror front there have been a lot of turkeys only standout ones are The Shining (although I found the film quite empty myself), Salems Lot (1979 Version) and I would say 1408. The rest have been mostly made for TV mini-series that have turned out crap e.g. The Stand It and the remake of Salems Lot.

Snake

Jack Sheehan

I must be alone here in saying that i HATED this film. Too many attempst at twists, and even in the end they wouldn't even kill them. Boo 2/10.

Deliverance

Jack Sheehan wrote:

I must be alone here in saying that i HATED this film. Too many attempst at twists, and even in the end they wouldn't even kill them. Boo 2/10.

I think it a King film for King fans really. The trailer was misleading and made the film out to be a jump out of your seat shocker which is definately was not. If you went into the cinema expecting that then I totally understand how you could be dissappointed.

Deliverance

Snake Plisken wrote:

Well u see the problem with a thread of King adaptations you have to split it out between his horror works and his more less fantasy work.
If you look at his work that is based in reality, you will see that there have been great adaptations to film Shawshank, Misery, Stand by me and The Green Mile, on the horror front there have been a lot of turkeys only standout ones are The Shining (although I found the film quite empty myself), Salems Lot (1979 Version) and I would say 1408. The rest have been mostly made for TV mini-series that have turned out crap e.g. The Stand It and the remake of Salems Lot.

Snake

The shining was a bit empty. His reality films were superb. Salems lot 1979, I didn't know they remade that? The 1979 version was poor enough at the time I watched it ages ago and as far as I remember I was extremely disappointed at the priests portrayal, he was killed off very quick in the movie whereas in the story he was a main character. The movie was very poor compared to the book which kept me up late into the night in terror as a kid.

Saying that desperation is one of my favourite stories of late, the movie representation of this was ok but it could never capture the evil of that damned scary cop Estragion. This is the only book that I have read where I actually ducked while reading it when the woman got the shotgun and had him in her sights, fired and the SOB ducked out of the way.

Also 'IT' to me was a brilliant horror film close to the story, I think his work has lots of depth and you really have to be a fan to appreciate the good and bad in his film adapations.

Canis Lupus

I'd heard so much about the Shining being one of the most amazing movies ever made. Twas a struggle to sit through it to say the least.

1408 started very well but just broke down to stupidity in the end.

Can someone clarify the end in that:

Did he get out of the room or did the voice recorder signify that he wasn't out, she'd just joined him? Wasn't totally clear on that part

By the way, are they intending to make a version of The Mist? That was a fab, if a little depressing, short story by King.

EDIT Just looked at the trailer for The Mist on youtube. I'm not feeling hopeful..... The CGI for the monsters looks terrible as well.

senordingdong

Yeah, upon re-thinking this, it was very 'meh'.
Copletely lacking atmosphere and not enough emphasis put on apparently important things like his daughter and his relationship with his dad.

And Cusack was not that good.
He played the part well but it was a bad part.