I am always interested in seeing John Cusack films, and add the fact it’s a Stephen King story and I was definetly interested, even if quite a few of his book to movies haven’t been upto much, the premise was still interesting to me. Before I watched it I had seen many peoples opinions on it, and it seemed very 50/50, people either loved or hated it and their didn’t seem much in between.

The story is this, John Cusack plays a guy called Mike Enslin, a paranormal writer who spends time in supposedly haunted rooms and writes about his experiences, but he doesn’t actually believe in the paranormal himself, he also has a broken marriage and is haunted by his daughters death. Mike receives a postcard about a hotel room at the Dolphin Hotel in New York, and yep, you guessed it, its room 1408! So off he goes to spend some time in the room.

When he arrives he meets the hotel manager Mr Olin, played by Samuel L Jackson, he isn’t in it much but the scenes between him and Cusack are great and definitely worth watching - an evil f****** room the hotel manager calls room 1408, a room where people have died and Mike will be next, but Mike ignores the warnings and heads for a stay into room 1408, and when there, the room is just that, evil. While in the room all sorts of freaky stuff happens and it’s when Cusack comes into his own.

The film is a psychological suspenseful horror type film, one that plays on your mind, it’s something a bit different to what is thrown around all the time these days mainstream wise, it used some good old skool type suspenseful techniques, there is no blood and gore here, it’s a mind f*** type psychological horror with an actual decent story for the main part.

So, did I like it? Yep, I did, but it wasn’t without faults. I would of liked to have known more about the room, more of a backstory to it and I also felt the characterization of Cusack’s character wasn’t upto much, but he’s such a good actor that you can look past that, and then the stuff with his Dad, again, no backstory, why should we care when we know nothing about what is happening or why it is? The film also got cliche and slowly got worse as the film went on.

I also didn’t care too much for the ending, I was expecting something good but just got something incredibly simple and just seemed like a cop out really. There is an alternate ending that is on the directors cut of the DVD, apparently this was how the director wanted it to end but people didn’t like it, so they went with the theatrical ending. You can view the alternate ending at http://youtube.com/watch?v=LG9ft-jPJFY. To be honest I don’t think that ending is anything that good either and adds to the clicheness when he looks behind and see’s no-one.

But with that said I still found it more than watchable, and when it was over it made me think a bit too, which is a good thing and I can’t emphasize enough how good Cusack is in this, it’s a one man show and he delivers. It’s a decent film with some very good parts and does make you think, but with some faults as well.

• Have you seen 1408? What did you think?