History Film / FourteenOhEight

''1408'' (2007) is a movie starring JohnCusack and SamuelLJackson, based on a StephenKing short story by the same name.

* BigNo: Kind of.

* ChekhovsGun:

* DeathByAdaptation:

* [[EarnYourHappyEnding Earn Your ]][[BittersweetEnding Bittersweet Ending]]: Boy, did Enslin earn it.

* [[spoiler:HeroicSacrifice]]: At the end when [[spoiler: he sets the room on fire and sits back and lights up his [[LastUnsmokedCigarette Last Unsmoked Cigarette]] and watches it burn.]]

* OnlySaneMan:

* PrimalFear:

* {{Pseudopod}}: The horror elements are explained in "The Pseudopod Autopsy: Stephen King’s 1408"

* RaceLift: A white middle aged British man played by SamuelLJackson. A very effective transition at that, as pointed out on his page: "If some British guy walked up to you and said 'Don't go in the room!', you'd probably do it out of spite. Now if ''Samuel L Jackson'' told you 'Don't go in the fucking room'..."

* ShoutOut:
** To the fridge scene from {{Ghostbusters}}.

* SnowMeansCold: When it gets freezing in the room, the floor is covered with a layer of snow. The sprinklers were on for awhile, but it should have generated some ice, not snow. But ofcourse the room's RealityWarper nature can explain such little details.

* TemptingFate: As mentioned in the description above, Enslin insisted on staying in the room.

* YankTheDogsChain:

** And [[spoiler: letting him "escape"]]. And [[spoiler: showing him his daughter, then ripping her away again.]]

* DropWhatYouAreDoing: At the end, when [[spoiler:Enslin is listening to his notes while his wife is unpacking from a recent move. Her reaction to hearing the voice of their dead daughter on the tape is entirely understandable.]]

->'''Gerald Olin'''

* LastUnsmokedCigarette: Literally. Enslin, who has quit smoking, keeps a cigarette behind his ear throughout the movie. [[spoiler: When he lights the room on fire and expects to die, he lights it up.]]

* SpookyPainting: Enslin finds three framed examples of Generic Hotel Artwork that get more menacing as the movie goes on. Specifically, [[spoiler: a park painting changes to a group of mad dogs attacking civilians, a fishing boat becomes a ghost ship, and a painting of a woman and her child becomes a painting of a woman ''breastfeeding her dead baby.'']]

** "We've Only Just Begun", the song that becomes Enslin's MadnessMantra by proxy, is also played in the [[spoiler:insane asylum where John Trent winds up]] after the events of ''InTheMouthOfMadness'' ([[HowWeGotHere but at the beginning of the actual movie]]).

--->[[HighOctaneNightmareFuel "My brother was actually eaten by wolves one winter on the Connecticut Turnpike."]]

* BillingDisplacement: SamuelLJackson is in the movie for a total of about fifteen minutes, yet he gets the same billing (and same amount of space on the DVD cover) as JohnCusack

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: Oh, come on! Every single thing that happens in Room 1408 seems a scary DisneyAcidSequence. Lampshaded in the story, when Enslin compares it to a bad trip and worries that the events are really just a hallucination caused by the cognac being dosed.

* ChekhovsGun: At the beginning of the movie, [[spoiler:Enslin receives a bottle of cognac from Olin. This is later used to make the molotov cocktail to destroy the room]].
* ChekhovsLecture: Mike's description of the room on how completely unremarkable it is. By the time the film ends, every aspect he describes will be twisted into a vision of terror.
-->"I need you to send somebody to fix my thermostat. Room's on fire."

* [[Room 101 Room 1408]]

* {{Room 101}}

** [[spoiler:The room itself]] in both cuts. In the original story, [[spoiler:it panics and hurriedly allows Enslin to leave once he lights the cigarette.]]

* Straw Vulcan: Enslin is a scientifically minded, skeptic and atheist, and the narrative of the film is set up to show that his worldview is a foolish one, and that his skepticism was his own undoing, and he would have been better served to have headed the warning of superstitution.

* Strawvulcan: Enslin is a scientifically minded, skeptic and atheist, and the narrative of the film is set up to show that his worldview is a foolish one, and that his skepticism was his own undoing, and he would have been better served to have headed the warning of superstitution.

->"It's an ''evil'' [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tus5qV1DcWs room]]."

''1408'' (2007) is a movie starring John Cusack and SamuelLJackson, based on a StephenKing short story by the same name.

* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:Subverted in the film.]] And done remarkably well, too--at the point in the film where this happens, [[spoiler:enough running time has elapsed that you might actually believe the movie was coming to an end.]]\\
\\
[[spoiler:And it gets even more meta than that. The surfboard incident at the start of the film has no other reason to be in the movie than this scene, and the well-publicized change from the DownerEnding made it seem like a particularly lazy way out. Even the restaurant scene contains a ShoutOut to the ending of the film version of ''Misery'', reinforcing this.]]

* AlienGeometries: In the short story, the door is crooked to both the left and right. Or not at all. At the same time.
** It's first left, then straight, then right, then both. Each time, it changed when he looks away.
*** And yet the room itself does take on some extremely alien geometries near the end. Mike found "Moorish" the closest thing he could come up with to pinning a word to it. King's text called it "a convex, rotting cave full of swoops and mad tilts".
* AllJustADream:[[spoiler:Subverted in the film.]]
** And done remarkably well, too--at the point in the film where this happens, [[spoiler:enough running time has elapsed that you might actually believe the movie was coming to an end.]]
*** [[spoiler: It gets more meta than that. The surfboard incident at the start of the film has no other reason to be in the movie than this scene, and the well-publicized change from the DownerEnding made it seem like a particularly lazy way out. Even the restaurant scene contains a ShoutOut to the ending of the film version of ''Misery'', reinforcing this.]]

* EldritchAbomination: The good news is that there are no ghosts involved. The story is very clear on this.

** As is Mr. Olin in the movie. When Enslin refers to a phantom in the room, Olin sharply rebukes him, in the charming way that only SamuelLJackson can.
** This arguably makes the movie even harder to watch. You desperately want ''something'' to hate for everything that's happening to Enslin, but hating a room is like, well, shouting at a minifridge. The good thing about this is that you're relieved that it's just this ''one'' room....
*** Well, unless we go by ''Rose Red'', which says that all places are alive, and Rose Red is the equivalent of a serial killer. Now how many human serial killers are there, and how many buildings are there...
* EldritchLocation: See EldritchAbomination above.

* EyeScream: A cleaning lady who found herself locked in 1408's bathroom for four seconds used a pair of scissors to cut her own eyes out. What had she seen? No one knows.
** In the short story it was subtler yet in its own way scarier. She simply goes blind while cleaning the room, and yet she says "she's blind, but she can see the most awful colors".

* HellHotel: Semi-subversion: Only the one room, and the owner does his best to make sure only a few select people go in there. The rest of the hotel is exceptionally pleasant.
** Hell, even the room (before it goes to shit) looks like a lovely spacious apartment.

* OnlySaneMan: Enslin believes himself to be this, he doesn't believe in the supernatural, claiming even it was real, there isn't a God to protect them from it. He even wears a hat at one point with the words "Paranoia is just total awareness".

* PrimalFear: Notably on the ''Heights and falling'' part...

* ShoutOut: To the fridge scene from {{Ghostbusters}}.

* SoundTrackDissonance: "We've Only Just Begun", indeed...
** Well, it makes sense. The room had only ''just'' begun to fuck with him. No matter how long he spent in there, 1408 could always think of something new...

** The Dolphin is at 2254 Lexington. Also, the metal plate inside the door's lock is engraved with "6214." [[RuleOfThree And,]] [[NoFourthWall the DVD's run time]] is 104 minutes, 8 seconds.
*** Sadly, the director's cut [[AvertedTrope clocks in at around 112 minutes]].
*** 1 + 12 = 13

* UpToEleven: Near the end of the film, you think the room has done its worst to Enslin--tricking him into thinking that [[spoiler:he had actually been out of the room for ''weeks'' before bringing him right back]]. Then it does [[DiedInYourArmsTonight that thing with Katie]], and you can't possibly imagine it doing ''anything'' more horrible than that, as Enslin looks like [[DespairEventHorizon a textbook example of a broken man.]] Then it [[spoiler:rewinds to the beginning and tells him he can relive the experience over and over and over...]]
** [[spoiler: And then the theatrical release has his wife overhearing their daughter's voice on the tape at the end of the movie, begging to be allowed to stay with her parents, before the room reclaims her.]] Remember this was the ending the studio forced so it wouldn't be such a DownerEnding.
* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: Oh, come on! Every single thing that happens in Room 1408 seems a scary DisneyAcidSequence.
** Lampshaded in the story, when Enslin compares it to a bad trip and worries that the events are really just a hallucination caused by the cognac being dosed.
* YankTheDogsChain: [[spoiler: Enslin is waiting for the clock to count down to zero, thinking then that he'll be safe. [[CompleteMonster Then the clock starts up again at 60 minutes]]]].

* OnlySaneMan: Enslin believes himself to be this, he doesn't believe in the supernatural, claiming even it was real, there isn't a God to protect them from it. He even wears a hat at once point with the words "Paranoia is just total awareness".

* RaceLift: A white middle aged British man played by SamuelLJackson. Although as it is said on his page, "If some British guy walked up to you and said 'Don't go in the room!', you'd probably do it out of spite. Now if ''Samuel L Jackson'' told you 'Don't go in the fucking room'..."