Day 283

movie: 1408
starring: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson
genre: Thriller,
year: 2007
format: Shaw Video On Demand

plot: A writer who has made his name by writing about haunted hotels, rents a room that is suppose to be so haunted that the hotel in question deny the very existence of it.  While there, the alarm clock starts a countdown giving him an hour to live, or die trying to get out alive, as he has a ghostly experience when he has a conversation with his dead daughter.

This is based on the Stephen King short of the same name.

I really liked this film. It's a good old fashioned horror/thriller that does just what it promises.  To spook the hell out of you and does it without being vulgar.

It comes back to one of King's favourite topics, and one that he's the master of; isolation of a creative mind.  Once again, we have a writer who is left alone to discover his own limitations.
We're brought into a direct personal hell.
He throws everything at us from ghosts, to time loops, to sound deprivation. Anything that could make the lead character start to go mad and doubt if what he's seeing is the real deal in hauntings or if he's just high?
In the end we're left with little doubt that the situations that he dealt with in the short time frame are real.   This film is also done with a degree of real time, as the "countdown" doesn't happen till after the first half hour of the film. 

what do i think i learned from this film?
The biggest non-believers are usually the ones who end up needing to cleanse their psyche.  The degree of isolation each person experiences in their life time will lead to the degree of madness each is willing to believe in.   Ghosts are real. And Stephen King has created a sub-genre all his own, that of the depressed writer in isolation.