It’s October! Time for some more Stephen King! I never actually watched this all the way through before, but I’ve read the short story.
Mike Enslin (broody John Cusack) is a writer of paranormal investigation books. The movie opens with him doing a sad looking book signing (I say sad looking from the perspective of a movie watcher not from the point of view of another writer - as long as someone shows up you’ve got something). He’s disillusioned about both his current career as he’s never seen a ghost and about his past aspirations to be a serious dramatic novelist. Like anything about a writer based on something by King, this is fairly authentic involving the process of research, struggles, and just the basic need to have a good enough selling point. The paranormal research pays the bills and Enslin needs a new angle. He’s sent an anonymous postcard of a New York hotel with the cryptic message, “Don’t go in 1408”. His publisher played by Tony Shalhoub helps get Mike into the room when the hotel’s manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson - yay!) refused to book it. The room has a history of suicides and madness therefore Olin has kept it vacant as long as possible.
He discusses this in his office with Mike, first asking if he drinks.
Mike responds, “Of course! I just said I was a writer.”
Where does this stereotype come from that writers drink to help them create? I know there is a history of alcoholic creatives in the world, but the only times I’ve tired to drink and write I got through a paragraph before being distracted by a music box. It was shiny and the music was so soothing.
Still, Mike insists on staying in the room with his trusty tape recorder, a device I’ve never tried myself because it means listening to your own voice to actually type stuff later. But I guess if you’re John Cusack, you don’t mind the sound of yourself. From there things get freaky (I don’t want to give away the scares). At first, Mike decides he’s “losing the plot” and thinks he’s being drugged. Then, the ghostly events begin to reveal his self-tragedies, his relationship with his father (who never liked his writing), and why he started to write about ghosts in the first place. His character arch involves his cynicism, his grief, and this idea that his writing stems from a place of giving up. It’s an interesting change from the original short story.
I was also surprised how many people are in this who I recognize from other movies and shows - Isiah Whitlock Jr., Drew Powell who was on Gotham, Andrew Lee Potts (who I think is just nice to look at), and even the woman who played the TV reporter in Princess Diaries 2. Yes, I happen to like Princess Diaries 2. I can like Stephen King and Princess Diaries.
