IMDB: 6.8
Rotten Tomatoes: 78%
Not all fans and followers of Stephen King might agree with me, but I could try and divide the time-line of screen adaptations of his work in three phases. Chronologically first, and in some part forming the basis of King's fame, especially as an author who's works make for good movies (though in my opinion, they are not really handy for the big screen - his short stories, though mostly great, are, well, short stories, meaning that the director and screenwriters of the movies have to add their own material, which may not work so well, while King's novels have just too many themes and subplots to be conveyed in two hours of a movie), would be the time starting with his first movie adaptation (of his first book) "Carrie" (1976), followed by "The Shining" (1980); later came Cronenberg's "The Dead Zone" (1983) and Carpenter's "Christine" (also 1983) - year '83 marking the end of this golden age.
Even if the following years saw some excellent screen adaptations of Kings's non-horror works: "Stand By Me" (1986), "Misery" (1990), "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) and "The Green mile" (1999), late 80's and 90's were dominated by rather cheap and, well, bad movies based oh King's stories.
In the new century, with Hollywood being at it's lowest creativity and avoiding new ideas like a plague, we are seeing the third phase of King's adaptations - decent budget and decent talent adaptations of his short stories: "Secret Window" (2004), "The Mist" (2007) and "1408" (2007).
The poster may feature Samuel L. Jackson as prominently as it may please, but 1408 is close to being a solo show of John Cusac (who does his job well), in a story of one man's fight with a hotel room. The execution is beautiful, the tension - hard to bear at some points. Still, I would like to criticize some scenes for using rather cheap scares - but there are not many of those. The story has many elements that King's fans will recognize - main character is a writer, also, there is a hotel room, which Mr King doesn't seem to like much. In fact, the story 1408 didn't start out as a story - it started out as an example in King's "On Writing" (the title is self explanatory here). And, it may just be me, but... it shows. The story has characters, plot with it's turning points, but it really is just as exciting as a textbook math problem would be to a mathematician. For example - as Jackson's character puts it at one point, "It's an evil fucking room"; and that, sadly, is all the reason ever given to the happenings of this movie (this wasn't really a spoiler). The movie hasn't really got a core or any drive; elements of the plot exist because they have to, not because Stephen King would have had a great idea.
Still, if you want to get scared - this is a good movie to watch. Overall - an adequate movie. That's it - not great. Just adequate.
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