1408 (revisited)

Haha, yes! I did just watch this and post a little review about this last year, but I wanted to revisit this film, and I figured it was the perfect time to do so. It was late, I was up north, laying on an air mattress in the middle of a camper with people sleeping all around me (no, it wasn’t some crazy shag party or something). So I figured I would throw open the MacBook Pro and put this guy on. The first night I got halfway through and was exhausted, so I retired it until the next night. That night I put it on for all to view as we were going to sleep. I came out of the shower and just about picked up where I left off. I won’t spend a lot of time discussing this film, but the strongest part of this film is definitely the first act and beginning of the second act. Samuel L. Jackson specifically played an awesome role in this film that added to its allure and mystery moving into the second act. Sadly, this film lost umph in the second act and definitely in the third act it was nothing to talk about.

1408 Trailer

After watching the first 45 minutes I did go back to my initial review and looked over what I wrote the first time around. And I wondered why I gave it only a 7 out of 10? Then I remembered right away as I got into the final 40 minutes of the film. It wasn’t an effective payoff in regards to crazy absurdities revolving around paranormal possession and such, and then actually being part of an actual haunting session. The film had great promise going in and then it fell flat for me because of execution. They should’ve stayed with the slower psychological stuff longer than they did. I mean water pouring out of the walls is fine, but the statically CG’ed ghosts threw me over. There are other ways to get those ghosts across to the audience. I bet it looked better on paper to the production team. Because once you cross that absurdity line, there is no going back and everything you’ve built in the first act is wasted.

Rating: 7/10