Room 1408
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Room 1408 |
| Original title | 1408 |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | Theatrical version: 100 minutes, Director's Cut: 107 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 16 JMK 14 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mikael Håfström |
| script |
Scott Alexander , Matt Greenberg , Larry Karaszewski |
| production | Lorenzo di Bonaventura |
| music | Gabriel Yared |
| camera | Benoît Delhomme |
| cut | Peter Boyle |
| occupation | |
| |
Zimmer 1408 (Original title: 1408 ) is an American horror film / mystery thriller directed by Mikael Håfström from 2007 . The screenplay by Scott Alexander , Matt Greenberg and Larry Karaszewski is based on the short story 1408 by Stephen King from his anthology In the Cabinet of Death .
action
The writer Mike Enslin lives separately from his wife Lily. After the death of his daughter Katie, he wrote several books about supposedly supernatural phenomena and refuted them. As part of his research for another book he wants of the 1408 Dolphin Hotel in New York City to stay, where already 56 hotel guests to death came. The hotel manager Gerald Olin tries to talk him out of this. Despite the warning that no guest who has ever moved into this room has survived there longer than an hour, and Olin only has the room cleaned under strict security precautions, Mike moves into room 1408. He himself believes the manager's warnings are not should be taken seriously and should only increase fear.
At first, room 1408 seems so normal and ordinary that Mike jokingly speaks of the "banality of evil" on his dictation machine. Flower wallpaper, an old closet, an antique bathroom, a broken air conditioner. Nothing to indicate a particularly horrific room. He gets the first indication that something is wrong after looking out the window for a while and looking back to see that the bed he was using before has been freshly made and that the bathroom is another completely unused one Makes the impression as if a maid had cleaned everything up in the blink of an eye. The impression intensifies when the radio begins to play by itself next to the bed. Mike thinks it's a joke to stir up fear in him. Even when the clock radio suddenly shows a countdown that gives him exactly one hour, he still believes it was all just a bad joke. Little by little, however, strange incidents pile up, confronting Mike with his own deepest fears. Among other things, he meets his demented father and dead daughter in the room. In flashbacks, which he himself experienced in the room, we learn that Mike's daughter died of a serious illness, which also broke up his marriage to his wife Lily. It becomes more and more clear to him that through his books and his manner he has robbed many people of the hope of an afterlife.
He tries to escape from the room, but a broken key and blocking, very stable doors keep him from leaving the room. An attempt to get into the neighboring room through the window also fails, because room 1408 suddenly has the only window on this house wall in a mysterious way.
After a few more frightening incidents in the room, the room becomes inexplicably flooded with water. Mike appears to drown and then, as at the beginning of the plot, wakes up on a beach where he once had a surfing accident. It appears that what happened in the hotel room was just a dream while he was unconscious. His wife Lily came to him from New York to visit him in the hospital. He writes down his experiences in the room after he has been released from the hospital. He experiences some déjà-vus in the form of suddenly appearing people who committed suicide in room 1408 or worked in the hotel, but he suppresses them. He goes to the post office to post the finished story, but there the craftsmen in the counter room tear down the whole room, and Mike is horrified to find that he is still in room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, which is now completely his burnt out presents.
Here he hears the voice of his dead daughter, which he initially dismisses as an imagination. When he sees her, however, he takes her in his arms and promises her, as she is very afraid, that she will no longer be left alone. While he is hugging her, she dies for the second time. Mike is devastated and pleads not to have to let her go a second time. Now the time on the clock radio is up.
The room transforms and looks like it did when Mike moved into it. Another 60 minutes can be seen on the alarm clock, which count down second by second. Then the phone rings. Mike asks why they don't just kill him. The female voice at the other end replies that every guest at the Dolphin has his own free will and can decide whether he wants to experience the 60 minutes over and over again, or whether he wants to use the "express check-out system" (which Would mean suicide ). Mike replies that he will not check out "her way". He doesn't want to do it like his predecessors, because he realizes that he was always an egoist and now wants to do something for others. From the cognac that Olin gave him and a bandana that he had previously wrapped around a cut in his hand, Mike makes a Molotov cocktail and sets the hotel room on fire.
Lily, whom he was able to reach via the Internet while in the hotel room , is on her way to the hotel when the fire breaks out. She makes sure that Mike is released from the room. At the hospital, she tells him that his experience and meeting with Katie were only imaginary. The two get back together. In the last scene you see Lily trying to dispose of a box with remains from the burned hotel room. Mike wants to keep the dictation machine. He plays it back, Katie's voice speaking to Mike. Lily hears this too and is speechless and shocked. You can tell that she now believes Mike that he met her daughter - in room 1408.
Alternative ending (Director's Cut)
Lily arrives at the hotel but is late when Mike throws in the window with an ashtray, causing a deflagration. Mike eventually dies in the flames.
After the funeral, Olin comes to the cemetery and wants to give her a box with the remains from the hotel room. Somewhat confused, however, she refuses.
Olin then sits in his car and listens to the tape on the voice recorder, listening to Katie's voice speaking to Mike. He has a vision of Mike and sees him sitting on his back seat with a burned face.
In the final scene, Mike can be seen smoking a cigarette in the burned-out room. Then he follows Katie's voice calling him and disappears like a ghost through the closed door.
Distant scenes
In one scene the room seems to tilt slightly, with Mike losing his grip on the ground and clinging to the window. This scene is not included in the Director's Cut either, but you can see it in the making-of.
Reviews
Peter Travers wrote in Rolling Stone magazine on June 21, 2007 that the middle part of the film contained some “unnecessary” special effects, but the tension increased in the film (“Hafstrom ratchets up the tension”). Håfström “wisely” followed Stephen King's path; the violence happens in the mind of the viewer.
Desson Thomson wrote in the Washington Post on June 22, 2007 that the writers of "bloodied" films like Hostel and Saw could learn something from this film. All you need is a hotel room with everyday objects that can cause fear. The audience should be concerned about the characters.
The film-dienst wrote that the film uses "traditional design means of old ghost films [...] without adding anything new to their models". The portrayal of John Cusack is convincing.
Trivia
The film was shot in Los Angeles , New York City, London and other locations in England . Its production amounted to an estimated 25 million US dollars . It opened in cinemas in the USA on June 22, 2007 and grossed around 72 million US dollars there until September 2, 2007, and the film grossed around 132 million US dollars worldwide. This makes it the second most commercially successful Stephen King film adaptation (after The Green Mile ).
The song that the clock radio suddenly plays several times is We've Only Just Begun by the Carpenters from 1970. Karen Anne Carpenter, who formed this successful pop duo with her brother Richard, died in 1983 at the age of only 32 of the consequences of her anorexia , which is still a matter of speculation today.
The number 13 is mentioned directly or indirectly several times throughout the film. So the checksum of 1408 is 13. The room is on the 14th floor; However, since the elevator display skips the 13th floor, the room is technically on the 13th . The number 6214 is on the door lock . The hotel is also located at 2254 Lexington Avenue, New York City, and the first death occurred in 1912. The cross-sum of each of these numbers is 13. Towards the end of the film, the woman on the other end of the phone calls the number 5 (he should ignore the alarm) and 8 (they killed his friends), adding these numbers again to 13.
As soon as the clock begins to count down from 60:00, the film ends exactly 60 minutes later.
One of the first victims in the room is called "Grady". Grady was also the name of a character in The Shining , another Stephen King horror story that is largely set in a hotel.
Web links
- 1408 in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Room 1408 at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Differences between short story and film in KingWiki
- Cut report: Theatrical Version ↔ Unrated
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age rating for room 1408 . Youth Media Commission .
- ^ Review by Peter Travers , accessed July 8, 2007
- ^ Review by Desson Thomson , accessed July 5, 2007
- ^ Room 1408 in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed on September 1, 2008
- ^ IMDb: Box office / business for 1408 , accessed July 5, 2007
- ↑ 1408 (2007) - Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 28, 2019 .
- ↑ Box Office Ranking in KingWiki