1408 (2007) Review

The medium of film sometimes engenders a most unexpected tonal connection. In the case of the latest Stephen King adaptation, that's a good thing.

Rooms 605 and 1408

Blocked writer © Dimension Films

A lot of comparisons will fly around in connection with 1408, the moody new Stephen King horror thriller from Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström. Most obviously things like The Shining, Jacob's Ladder and Misery.

But I want to throw a different one out there. Intentionally or not, Håfström and his everyman star John Cusack have put together a contemporary re-imagining of 1991 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner Barton Fink. Like that Coen brothers masterpiece, 1408 depicts one writer's version of hell by dredging up his most restless inner demons; but instead of Fink's creative writer's block, in this case it's some seriously unresolved emotional blocks.

Checking into room 1408 at New York's Hotel Dolphin, Cusack's writer character of Mike Enslin is a disenchanted cynic, having garnered a small but faithful reader following for his formulaic debunking of allegedly haunted tourist destinations. He is determined once again to impose his realist's view of things on the 56 historical deaths mumbo jumbo spouted by hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson).

Blocked writer © 20th Century Fox

Fink is also a cynic on a mission, a New York playwright intent on injecting some of his "Theater of the Common Man" into a screenplay assignment commissioned by Hollywood studio chief Jack Lipchick (Michael Lerner). But instead of father and husband's block, what hurtles Fink down the rabbit hole in room 605 of L.A.'s no less eerie Hotel Earle is the most basic of artistic purgatories: a blank page.

Thank goodness 1408 producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura was never able to find a home for the originally envisioned version of the King short story, to be written and directed by Eli Roth. Otherwise, instead of a moody cousin to the Coens, we would have wound up with a balls-to-the-wall thrashing of Roman Polanski's 1976 classic The Tenant (a film the Coens cite as a major influence for Fink).

Much of the success of both Fink and 1408 comes from the ability of John (Turturro) and John (Cusack) to subtly journey a character from cocky confidence to devastated disarray. In Cusack's case, he also moves within the overall King career arc from the flashback of Stand by Me to the flash forward of 1408.

(l to r) Håfström, di Bonaventura at last week's Westwood premiere © Eric Charbonneau/WireImage.com

These are not your typical leading men, with Turturro tipping more towards the Jack Nicholson-Shining end of the SK scale and Cusack better aligned with fellow sensitive room prisoner Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption). Throw in Misery's James Caan and you've got one of the other contextual reasons 1408 works so well: to bring home the unique and original flavor of Stephen King, left-of-center male actors work best.

Meanwhile, even though 1408 takes place in the War on Terror present as opposed to Fink's World War II decimated Hollywood (probably the reason Fink got the gig in the first place), there is a very pronounced retro feel to Håfström's hotel. OK, so there was no wireless Internet in Fink's quarters or access to Google, wrestling websites and other destinations that might have helped him unlock his creative crisis. But overall, the Hotel Dolphin is very much an anachronism, with a brick exterior, period canvas oil paintings and ornate furniture anchoring it as a grisly gothic gateway rather than any kind of 2007 membership rewards earner.

Turturro, also a Best Actor winner at Cannes for Fink, has a little more help on the thespian front in the form of Room 604 insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman). But for Cusack, Room 1408 literally and figuratively soon shrinks to a one-man show. I'd say that this benefits the horror thriller aspects of the film just as Fink's neighbor helped the Coens to inject their signature comedy into the dramatic framework.

Bringing to life more great pulp fiction © Dimension Films

An uncommon creative intelligence courses through the work of the Coens and Mr. King. Every little detail has meaning, from the three six's mentioned in the elevator scene in Fink to the fact that the individual numbers of Enslin's hotel room - 1, 4, 0 and 8 - add up to a very unlucky number. The Coens and King both sprung up far from Hollywood, in the Midwest and Maine respectively. There are few if any corny clichés to their narrative work, nor cumbersomely botched titles. Barton Fink is about just that, a guy named Barton Fink, while 1408 tells you all you need to know about where you, as a moviegoer, are going to spend the next couple of hours.

When you put actors like John Cusack and John Turturro in some cunningly constructed tunnel trips, the creative cradle will indeed rock (1999's Cradle Will Rock, made by Shawshank's Robbins, is the only movie the two have made together). So this weekend and beyond, sit back and enjoy the second half of a delightful bicoastal double bill.

Or, in the words of Fink's insurance salesman Charlie Meadows: 'Look upon me! I'll show you the life of the mind!'