Ep 110 - 1408 (2007)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Can John Cusack get a good night's sleep in a room obsessed with the number 13? [00:00:12] Speaker B: Completely overrated. [00:00:14] Speaker C: Hello everybody and welcome back to our rating the show where I get together with two of my buddies, we take a movie franchise, break it down by film, give them overall score and throw them back up on the board to see where they land compared to the other movie franchises. But this week we are doing our Patreon pick where you guys get to decide what movie franchise or what movie we're going to be doing. So. So this week we're taking a look at 2007's 1408 with John Cusack and Sam Jackson. Wow. Completely blanked on his name. I'm joined as always by Brian and Will. Brian, how are you doing this week? [00:00:43] Speaker B: I'm good, Dan. Had a pretty good week. Been playing some video games and got some relaxing time in which was much needed. How about you, Will? What'd you do this week? [00:00:53] Speaker A: What did I do this week? I carved some pumpkins. Getting ready for Halloween. My costume is here. I haven't tried it on. Hopefully it fits but. Always excited for a little Halloween. Dan, how about you, sir? [00:01:06] Speaker C: So I actually ended up missing the watch party on Sunday because my brother in law was busy welcoming his first child into the world. So I ended up driving about four hours away going spending some time at the hospital with them. So it was incredible. Everybody's happy, everybody's healthy. It was amazing to have been there. But. But unfortunately it means I did get to miss out on the watch party. So I had to watch this one by myself. So I'm very curious to see the experience you guys had with this one because it turns out there's actually like four different endings to this movie. And I don't know which one you guys saw. So that's. I mean, probably the same one. But it just sounds interesting where it could end up. Now out of curiosity, Brian, is this your first time watching 1408? [00:01:48] Speaker B: I think not. I think I've seen it before, but I didn't remember it at all. I. I feel like I've seen this, but I just did not remember it at all. When did this one come out? This one came out in like [00:02:01] Speaker C: 2007. [00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:03] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. And you know, I was happy to watch it for what felt like the first time because I didn't know what was going to happen. But I swear I've seen this one. I have to. Maybe there's just a lot of movies where people lock themselves into a scary room or something because this isn't like an original idea here exactly. But I didn't know what was coming. So it was, it was a good, I guess, first watch for me. [00:02:30] Speaker C: What about you, Will? Have you seen this before? [00:02:32] Speaker A: This is my second time viewing. I watched it similar to release time. I don't think I saw it in theaters, but I did see it relatively soon after release. [00:02:42] Speaker C: Same here. I watched this like when it first probably came to blockbuster. I definitely did not see this in theaters. Read the book, I think beforehand and then, well, like the short story beforehand. But like Brian, this was essentially a first time viewing. I did not remember this movie at all. And the ending, granted, there are multiple completely different from what I was anticipating to have happen. So it was one of those, like, oh, like I didn't remember this at all. Even the part that I thought I remembered, I didn't remember. So that's kind of wild for you, Will. Did you remember it very well or was this forgettable for you as well? [00:03:13] Speaker A: I remember not being thrilled by the movie the first time I saw it. So it was nice giving it a revisit to see what I actually think of it now. [00:03:24] Speaker C: Yeah, not gonna lie. Exact, exactly the same. I remember watching it and feeling kind of underwhelmed. And so when it was brought up in the chat, I was like, okay, it's been 20 years or close to 20 years. I'm willing to give this another try, see if it does better for me. Spoilers, kind of. But interestingly enough, after we watched this one, Bubba Hotep sent me a message in Discord. It looks like they're actually debating doing a sequel for this. They've got the director back, Sam Jackson back, and John Cusack back. I have no idea where they'd go with that or why they would bother, but this might be the first movie. Well, some of them, they can't. I guess they could if they. Whatever, we'll get there. This might be the first movie to go from our Patreon poster to our franchise poster if they do end up going through with that. But [00:04:18] Speaker A: yeah, indeed. I got a quick question for you just to reference back a little. You mentioned that this is based on the Stephen king short story 1408. You said you've read that story. Do you recall that story at all? And if so, do you remember how it ended? I've heard about the story. I've never read it in full though. [00:04:40] Speaker C: I know that I read it. I have the book about 10ft away from me. Couldn't tell you a thing about it other than maybe that's where the ending I'm picturing is coming from. So, like, maybe they're. The ending is so drastically different, and that's why I'm imagining that. And maybe that's why I was disappointed with it, because the ending was different than the book. I don't know. I'd have to reread the book or reread the short story or find some sort of a summarization online, which I should have done before tonight, now that I'm thinking about it. But no, this is a movie where, like, I can tell you for a fact I saw it. I can tell you that I saw it with my wife. Could not tell you a thing about the movie other than, like, the very basic premise of, like, he's a writer and he locks himself in a haunted hotel room. [00:05:21] Speaker A: Right [00:05:21] Speaker C: after that. I was watching this thing for the first time. [00:05:24] Speaker A: As far as I recall, like, reading, is that it ends similarly. He does get out of the hotel room after it's caught on fire and is traumatized in a different way, kind of living his life in constant fear, you know, which is a little different than the movie ends. One of the endings anyway. Do we just. Let's. Do we jump to the ending or [00:05:48] Speaker C: we almost want to jump in and just make sure we're all talking about the same thing. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:05:51] Speaker C: I missed the watch party. How did the movie end for you guys? [00:05:55] Speaker A: He gets in a boat. I think it's like a speedboat, right? Run. And I think he just. He just lives on the water. After the fire traumatized him so badly, he just wants to be out in the open constantly, right? Something like that. [00:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:10] Speaker C: Never trust a Canadian. [00:06:11] Speaker B: It was. It was a pink boat. No, the ending that [00:06:17] Speaker A: I [00:06:17] Speaker B: remember. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Wait, was that. I can't remember. [00:06:20] Speaker B: He finally really does exit the hotel room, and he finds a. His little recorder, his audio recorder, and he plays it, and it has on it the sound of his daughter's voice saying things. And him and his wife both hear that, and then they know that whatever was happening was really happening. And I did like that. I didn't know how they were going to end this and have it be creepy because they already had the, oh, you're out, you're not out, you're out, you're not out kind of thing. And I didn't want that to happen again. So having him hear his daughter's voice and know that it was real was a pretty solid finish for the film. And I kind of liked that. It wasn't exactly scary, but it felt like a Good, complete story at that point. How we got to that ending was rough for me. [00:07:18] Speaker C: That's totally fair. That is the ending that I saw as well. And I actually like that ending quite a bit, because up until that point, the wife is kind of playing it off like, oh, you know, you. You had an experience or whatnot. But, like, you don't really get the impression she's buying it, right? Like, no, no, just a hotel room. You know, you light a fire, so be it. It's not until that moment where it kind of clicks in for her. Oh, like you actually experienced something. Like, there was actually a ghost in the room. You actually did see our daughter, and kind of the look on her face was incredible. Like, that. That ending really, really worked for me. It actually did give me chills. Again, I wouldn't say it was scary. I wouldn't really say this movie at all is scary. But there's some twists in it and there's some parts of it that I did enjoy. And the ending is, I would say, a huge plus for me. I just watched a different ending on YouTube while I was waiting for you guys to show up. No shade, I promise. Where he dies in the hotel room. Cuts to their. His funeral. You see him getting lowered in a grave right next to Lily, just like the movie had predicted earlier on. The movie's full of predictions that come true. So you see him getting lowered in. And then Sam Jackson approaches Lily and is like, hey, you know, I'm the manager of the hotel. I knew your husband. Here's a box of his belongings. And she's like, I don't want to remember him like that. Like, no, thank you. And so he goes and sits in his car and plays the little recorder, and he hears the girl's voice. And then behind him, he sees a girl, like, in. Like. Like in [00:08:47] Speaker B: the [00:08:47] Speaker C: rearview mirror. No, in the rearview mirror. Like, like, 30ft behind him, like, daddy? Daddy, where are you, Daddy? And it looks like it could be Katie. And he kind of gets freaked out. And then a burnt corpse in the backseat jumps at him. And he looks behind again, and, like, there's an actual father there looking for the little girl. It's not John Cusack. And then he's like. And he drives away. And I'm like, that was unsatisfying. I would have hated it if that was the actual ending. So I. I'm really significantly happier with the one that we got. And then one of the other endings is the exact same one as the one we got, except for the wife doesn't hear the voice. So John hears it, he hears it clear as day, but she's still just putting books on the shelf and just like, whatever. [00:09:27] Speaker B: That's kind of a cool twist because then it shows him having a mental breakdown and it's, it's, it's happening in his head now whether the room is acting upon him or not, that's debatable. But it, that's kind of a cool twist too. But I like the ending that we got. I thought it was pretty solid, but like I said, how we got there kind of bothered me. One of the things that bothered me was the gotcha moment where he thinks he's free and we spend days outside of the hotel room. We're back in sunny California on the beach, everything's just going great. And then all of a sudden he finds himself at like the post office or something and a crew of demolition guys starts tearing down the walls. And in 30 seconds they've demoed reality around him and he's back in the hotel room. And it seemed like an extravagant way to try and convince the audience of what they already knew. Like we, we knew he wasn't out yet, it was too early for the movie to end and they wanted us to be fooled. And so they just went a really long time outside of the hotel room just to bring him back in. And that one didn't feel right. It didn't land right. It didn't. It just didn't work for me, that whole thing. [00:10:47] Speaker C: I completely agree. I was. Good question. I was going to ask you guys if that fooled you, honestly, even for a second. And the fact that it went on really, really long didn't really do it. Like clearly they were trying to make it seem like, aha, the movie's moved on now. But like, I don't know, something about the way it was going on is just like, no, he's still there. [00:11:06] Speaker B: You're just waiting for it. [00:11:07] Speaker C: Yeah, [00:11:07] Speaker B: just waiting for it. [00:11:08] Speaker C: And then they pulled off like. And even the reveal was like kind of slow. Like them tearing down the post office kind of took too long for what it was like it should have been like a jump scare back or something. As opposed to like what felt like a two minute scene of them tearing down the post office. [00:11:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Construction going to town here. Yeah, no, it was a, it was an odd choice in general, I find. I thought more interestingly that the potential of the surfing accident, he did die during the surfing accident. And then everything from that point in the movie is kind of like a Dante's Inferno story of him in purgatory and. And either he's going to hell or he's going to heaven. And by the end of the movie he reaches heaven by his self sacrifice and you know, owning up to all his sins and all whatnot and have what have you. So that I think is a more interesting take on the. Him surfing accident actually. He passes on during that time. And the rest of the movie is this seven circles of hell or whatever it is, but [00:12:18] Speaker B: doesn't even mention the layer, the levels of hell. At one point he's like, I'm on five or six or something, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying or how that was working. [00:12:27] Speaker C: He mentions almost everything that's going to happen later on in the movie at some point in this movie. Like the amount of, I guess we'll call it foreshadowing in this movie that happens is kind of insane and not, I don't know, [00:12:40] Speaker B: not in a good way. [00:12:41] Speaker C: It doesn't feel clever. It feels like it wants to be clever, but it doesn't feel clever. Does that make sense? Like, especially with like, man, this hotel room's on fire. And I'm just like, yep, we know what's coming. Like, [00:12:54] Speaker B: yeah, [00:12:54] Speaker C: maybe that's just because it's seen before. Maybe it's because in the trailer, I don't know. But the hotel room being in blazes feels like something they had on. Like they very prominently shown about this movie. Like you knew that was gonna happen at some point. [00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And the references, like it's even on the wall, like, [00:13:10] Speaker C: burn me alive, [00:13:11] Speaker A: burn me alive or whatever, which is like the hotel room going to be burned, him being burned. Like it. There's all of the references throughout this, which is like, again, yeah, some of them are more clever than others. Some of them work better than others throughout. For sure. [00:13:25] Speaker C: Yeah. I found to take this in a slightly positive note for a minute. I found this movie actually worked for me pretty well. Pretty much anytime there was somebody else on screen. With John Cusack, like when he's interacting with people, like the beginning scene with him going to the hotel, I actually enjoyed quite a bit. You kind of get a good sense for who he is. You know, he's a struggling writer. He's kind of doesn't even really believe in what he's doing. Then you go to the bookstore and it's kind of embarrassing for him because like two people show up and you get like the one person there who legitimately believes and is disappointed with his answer when he's like, I've never seen a ghost. Like, I've been to all these places. You've read all these books. I've never once seen a ghost. He's like, oh, this is getting too real. Who wants to sign something? So you get a good set, like, you know, and the one chick brings a book to him and is like, hey, here's the first book you ever wrote. This is actually really well done. Has interesting characters. And he's like, yeah, that's. That's not me. So, like, either he had 15 minutes of fame and couldn't reproduce it, or he just never really got that 50 minutes of fame. But it does a pretty good job of building up who this main character is. And then even the same with, like, the Sam Jackson scene. Like, Sam Jackson's always fantastic, but even, like, that was really well done. But then once you get to the hotel room and it's just kind of him chilling in 1408 for over half the movie, I find myself wandering, like, that's supposed to be the thrilling part. And instead I was just kind of like, okay, [00:14:46] Speaker B: yeah. [00:14:47] Speaker C: With last week, we were talking about how the Deadites torture you, and they really, like, get in your head and like. Like get behind, like, who you are and rip apart yourself [00:14:56] Speaker B: with you. [00:14:57] Speaker C: They mess with you. This movie didn't feel. Even though the monster was supposed to be messing with them, didn't feel like they were going hard at him. Didn't feel like they were messing with them all that hard, I. I guess until the daughter shows up. But that's quite a bit into this movie. [00:15:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I think part of the problem is, again, is, like, you're watching to the. To the benefit of John Cusack, I think, does a great job in this movie. He does come across as this broken man after he loses his daughter. You don't know that right away, but that's why he doesn't write these interesting actual books anymore. He's just doing these haunted House top 10 books because he lost his faith, he lost his daughter, he lost his will, he walked out on his wife. He's like this broken character. And. And so when he goes into this room, the room isn't really doing anything to him, but trying to force himself to reflect on his own life choices and his own, you know, flaws. So it's more about him than the room, if that makes any sense. And so I think that's, like, the angle on it. It's like the room doesn't actually kill anybody. From what we've heard, even from Samuel's character. It's like most people choose suicide [00:16:20] Speaker C: themselves. [00:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah, they. They [00:16:22] Speaker C: check out early. [00:16:23] Speaker A: They check out early because they can't face themselves. And that's. That's the. That's what takes them out. Right. The room just, like, puts all that in front of them in a scary way or a force you to face yourself way. Right. They literally do it. He's the man in the mirror, right? When he's, like, trying to call for help across the alley. And then they find out it's him. Right. He's facing himself. So, [00:16:53] Speaker C: yeah, [00:16:53] Speaker B: yeah, I. I kind of felt like the intention of the Room was to drive people insane to the point where they kill themselves. I think, like, the Room even said, like, you won't last an hour or whatever because it's got 60 Minutes on the clock and it's trying to run him down. And so whether it was his dark psyche that's trying to mess with him or the Room is just pointing out his dark psyche or whatever, I'm not really sure. They didn't make it very clear to me on how that was going to work, but I did. I think that it was a pretty decent premise for what the Room was trying to do, but I'm just not sure if the execution of what the Room was trying to do was very good. [00:17:35] Speaker C: That's exactly where I'm at. I don't mind the premise of the movie, and I like the idea of him finally having to confront his demons because his daughter died and he had no control over that. But then he left his wife and he had complete control over that, and he's probably living this incredibly lonely existence now. And like, I. I understand that he's not in a good headspace, and I understand that the Room could mess with him in that way. But just the ways that the Room did mess with him for most of the time didn't feel very personal to him. It just kind of felt like weird stuff was happening [00:18:11] Speaker B: and the weird stuff was kind of fun. It was like the stuff that had the best opportunity to scare me, though it didn't really. And maybe I'm just saturated with scary movies because we've been doing this all month, but it felt like those were the things. Like the crazy psycho guy running at him out of nowhere and weird stuff just kind of happening. The jump scare kind of things, they didn't work for me, but I felt like that was the opportunity really to get me to jump or be scared where I was at. When it got to his daughter messing with him, I even wrote in the chat, I was like, wow, okay, they're taking it to the next level now. That's really horrible to put this guy through this by making him witness his daughter dying again and again. That's really horrible. Not scary, but horrifying. So that was kind of a cool mix there. But overall, I just. I kind of feel like the execution of both of those themes just wasn't perfect. Honestly, the best part of the movie was the interaction with Samuel L. Jackson, which I find it absurd that IMDb has man number one at book signing, man number two at book signing, lady at book signing, and young woman at book signing all listed in the credits before Samuel L. Jackson. Kind of weird. Whatever. Samuel Jackson had an incredible role in this. He built up how scary this room was going to be. And that section worked. Maybe it worked too well. Because when we got to the room, I was like, really? That's it? [00:19:43] Speaker C: Well, in first, that's what John Cusack says too. [00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:19:45] Speaker C: he's like, where's the bone chilling terror? Where's the. The blood? [00:19:48] Speaker B: But even by the end of the movie, I was like, Sam oversold this. [00:19:54] Speaker C: Well, I mean, he does almost die. So like, sure, [00:19:57] Speaker B: yeah, [00:19:57] Speaker C: he almost kills himself. He almost takes himself out when the room goes like. And for instance, like he says, you're not going to last an hour. And we see the timer go down, hit the 1 minute mark or the zero, and then just restarts again. So we don't know how long he's actually in this room and how long it's playing with him. Like he could have been in there for less than an hour. We're not really sure. We can't really trust anything we see. Kind of [00:20:19] Speaker B: could have been in there for a day. We don't know [00:20:21] Speaker C: exactly. We're not really sure. Messing with him with his daughter, I really liked. And then when he's talking to his wife on the laptop, because you're not really sure if he's actually talking to his wife on the laptop or if that is part of the messing with him. But then when he starts talking to her, like. Like there's a little window on the screen that the room is controlling of him being like, hey, come to the room and come get me. You have to come get me. Come straight up. Don't talk to anybody. Just go straight up to room 1408. Like, that was kind of fun for me too. Like that was the room actually messing with him. Whereas, like, you know, the picture going slightly askew or the water bursting in was kind of like well, that's not really much to do with him, I guess. I mean, like, he's a surfer, I guess, but like. Like some of the things where the room was messing with him just felt super impersonal. [00:21:08] Speaker B: And [00:21:08] Speaker C: I think that was kind of my issue with this movie. And I didn't hate this movie, but, like, the. The scares weren't really scary and the psychological wasn't really targeted. It was just kind of stuff happened for a while. [00:21:21] Speaker B: I. I kind of wish that they would have developed some sort of fears and phobias for John Cusack's character that you could have really pushed on once he got into the room. But all we had was this broken guy who went through his daughter's death and left his wife, and he's struggling in his. In his career. That's really all there was. He didn't have any points that the room could really stab him in. And that kind of sucked because then we have kind of impersonal scares. And it wasn't amazing. For me, I'm not saying it was bad. I just. I kind of really do feel like Sam Jackson built that up too much. Because when he first goes in the room, I was scared of the room. I was really afraid. As Cusack is going in, the door closes behind him and I'm just like, what's going to happen? Not a whole lot was the answer to that for me. So. Yeah. So I love those dialogue sequences with Samuel Jackson. I actually really like the dialogue that Cusack's character had. He felt like a writer. He was a wordsmith. He spoke eloquently at different times, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less. And I'm not sure if that was poor writing on his character's part. I wanted that to be a little bit more solid all the way through. I feel like he kind of fell out of that writer character at times, but most of the time his character was solid and had really good dialogue built into him. That made me feel like this is a writer, a person who knows words. [00:22:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I liked that he had the little. Because I said, like most of the scenes where he had somebody else to work with, the movie worked really well for me. [00:22:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yep. [00:23:00] Speaker C: And then when he's got a little tape recorder, that's a really smart way of giving him access to what's going on inside of his head without, like self narration or something. [00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:09] Speaker C: Because we're not really sure we trust him. We really know we don't trust the room. But when he's saying stuff out loud at Least you're getting a sense for where he's at. So having the tape recorder there so you can kind of get that, like, not only for the ending, which was fantastic, but even along the way, gives him a reason to talk to somebody, as opposed to just talking out loud for no reason. But even like Sam Jackson refusing to get off the floor at 1400, he's like, this is as close as I get. Or the mechanical guy, the. The repairman who shows up, the engineer, whatever his title is. And he's like, I'm not coming in the room. Like, you can fix that. That's fine. I'm not even coming in the room. And, like, the second he hits it, the guy's gone. Like, he's just down the hall. Like, more scenes like that would have been fantastic because it shows, like, the world, the world that knows about 1408 is freaked out by it and wants nothing to do with it. And it's just this great way of giving you this. Like, you really shouldn't be here. Like. Like, they are playing this up really nicely. Will we? [00:24:00] Speaker B: Those are all great sequences too. [00:24:02] Speaker C: Agree. [00:24:03] Speaker A: No, I. I agree with a lot of what you guys are saying. Again, like, I guess I'll just throw a question out for you guys. Is this room this, like, ever omnient present thing? Like, did the room send the invite for him to come? Where did it come from? [00:24:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I do feel like the hotel room itself probably did send that invitation. I have no idea how. It doesn't seem like it's got powers that extend beyond the room itself. But some of the theories I saw online were people saying, like, Sam Jackson probably sent it out. I get the feeling Sam Jackson's character is completely earnest. He does not want him there. He does not want him going to the room. And even in the alternate cut, when he's talking to the wife at the funeral, like, he starts going like, your husband didn't die in vain. Like, nobody else is going to get affected by that room. Like, he believes it 100%. So I don't think there's any chance he sent that letter out. They don't really explain it, that it was the room's power that did it. But, like, I feel like that's the only logical explanation. [00:25:00] Speaker B: Maybe that's how. What we'll get in this sequel is a little bit of backstory on where that note came from. Or maybe we'll get a prequel, since the room's been burnt to the ground now. I don't think burning the room down would really Stop it. I mean, unless the entire building came down and we never find out any story as to why the room is doing this. What is. There's no backstory on the room whatsoever. Doesn't really hurt the story. But it could have added to it had we had some good writing and a little bit more tie in of why did John Cusack get chosen for this room? Why? What does the room have for a backstory that would connect with this? We didn't get those threads tied at all. I think that was a missed opportunity. [00:25:43] Speaker C: What even. Is the room? Is it a ghost? Is it a previous victim? Is it a [00:25:47] Speaker B: demon? We don't know. [00:25:49] Speaker A: That's. That's kind of why I fall back on this kind of Dante's Inferno theory of like, he died and this is his purgatory after the swimming incident, the surfing, that. The movie's tone all kind of shifts. Like that's where it kind of gets the eerie nature to it in general. Before that, it was pretty happy. Go lucky. As far as I think, like, there's more close ups, there's more angles, there's a whole lot of just different choices. And that's why an anonymous letter can come because the whole thing, he's in this purgatory and it's custom made to him because he's this ghost writer and so he's going to go to where there's the story that he can write. And so he goes to this room that no one knows exists. Why wouldn't he know? He's done so many haunted houses, so many haunted cemeteries, so many haunted castles. How has he never heard of 1408 prior to this happening? And so like, to me, it feels like that's. Those story elements line up very well that he's already done. And now he's finding out if he's going to be worthy of heaven or perish down below. And. And yeah, I don't know. That's. That's like the most answer you can get from not answering anything about this room. [00:27:16] Speaker B: And, and it could be a logical explanation to this. You know, that that works. But you have to kind of find that answer by scouring the Internet, right? Like it wasn't relayed to us in the film. So the film failed in not letting us know for sure or hinting to us that this is what's really going on. Instead, we got the ending where his daughter's voice was real on the recording. So what does that mean then? [00:27:43] Speaker A: Was it though? You [00:27:44] Speaker B: know, [00:27:44] Speaker A: was it though? [00:27:45] Speaker B: Was it, Was it? Or is he in purgatory or after Purgatory, we don't. We don't really know. It definitely didn't explain that well enough. Like, I didn't think that at all. And. And you're explaining it to me now, and it's great idea, but I didn't get that watching the show. So if that's the point of the movie, it failed in. In projecting that on me. [00:28:04] Speaker C: Two points I want to touch on there. You mentioned. How did he not know about this room? The difference between the hotel rooms that we see him staying at, the hotel rooms that he's talking about, is those people are desperately looking for attention. They are reaching out to him, and they're like, hey, you know, this attic is haunted. It's this hotel off the highway that nobody goes by anymore, so please come stay with us. Versus this hotel room where, like, Sam Jackson is straight up, like, [00:28:29] Speaker A: keeping it, [00:28:29] Speaker C: stonewalling people from going and staying in this room. Like, he doesn't want to advertise it. He doesn't want it in his book. He doesn't want people to know that it exists. And I think that's kind of why when the room burns down, it's not so much that maybe the demon is dead, but if the demon is stuck to that one room now, all they have to do is just condemn that room. They don't have to fix it up again. And now you can't stay because they were saying at the beginning how the law states if you've got a room, you have to rent it out. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's what the movie says. [00:28:54] Speaker A: Apparently it is. [00:28:55] Speaker C: You can't stay in a hotel room that is condemned. So if they just don't fix that room up now, they have an excuse to never let anybody else in there again. So I think in that sense, the demon can live there all he wants, but as long as nobody else ever has to enter the room, we're fine. As far as the ending goes. The one thing I think the voice is real because she hears it. If it. I get what you're saying about purgatory, but there's no reason to believe that she would be in purgatory. I guess that he. If he's there, he's just imagining her. So, whatever. The question I was wondering is he has a weird little look in his eye. Do you think any chance the room, the ghost, the demon, the whatever jumped ship when he realized the room was going to be destroyed and he himself is now possessed or Something [00:29:41] Speaker A: I'd say the more likely occurrence is, again, he's dead, but she came to the room and now this is her purgatory. [00:29:50] Speaker C: Oh, okay. If they are going to do a sequel, call it 1409 and have Sam Jackson and John Cusack back, it would kind of make sense if he's possessed and whatnot like that. That almost makes more sense because, like, there's no reason to go back to this hotel room. And like, what, Sam Jackson's gonna find a different hotel that also has a haunted room for him? Like, that would be the stupidest thing. Like [00:30:12] Speaker B: there reason that maybe Cusack's character wants to go back to find his daughter because he heard her voice, a real voice on the recorder, and so he wants to go back with his wife and talk to Sam and be like, I, I want to stay in the room this time. I'm. I'm gonna say because I want to save my daughter or something. Right. Gets in and said he could do that. I don't know. [00:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds horrible. [00:30:36] Speaker C: I. I also don't like that at all. [00:30:39] Speaker A: And, and let's be honest, I think they have to Change it to 1507. Or wait, how do numbers work? It has to still equal 13. It starts to equal 13. Right. One plus five is six, plus seven is 13. [00:30:56] Speaker C: Yeah, that's numbers [00:30:57] Speaker B: for you. Okay, so one plus four plus eight is 13. And that's. I. I was wondering how he got that on. Like he was writing that down. I was like, how's that? But I [00:31:04] Speaker A: wasn't. I didn't think I [00:31:06] Speaker B: needed to do math to watch a movie, but here we are. [00:31:09] Speaker C: I had to go back because the postcard scene I didn't see the one I just saw equals three. And he's like, oh, clever. And I'm like, what? Like I missed [00:31:16] Speaker B: it [00:31:16] Speaker C: entirely. It just didn't connect for me. But [00:31:18] Speaker B: I think I missed a lot watching this one. And I was really trying to hang in there, but this movie floundered in the middle for me. For sure. It slowed down. The scares weren't effective. I wouldn't say they're bad, they just weren't effective. The horror at the end of dealing with his daughter was an improvement, but at the same time, it was kind of one note for me. It was like, oh, that's terrible. And. And that's it. And now we're back to is he really in the hotel or not? Which. That, that whole thing kind of frustrated me because then at the end, I'm waiting once again for the other shoe to Drop like you're waiting for that crazy, scary ending thing to happen. And what we got was the voice on the recording, which was a solid way to finish. And I did like that. But it. It needed to be that because anything else would have pissed me off at that point. Having the way it played out in the middle with him getting out of the hotel room, but not really. I just didn't like that. [00:32:19] Speaker C: Yeah, Burnsy and Chad is saying that he's still in the hotel room. And if that's the way they're going to get to the sequel, I think that would also, depending on the execution, potentially also really bother me. Like, there's only so many times you can play the he got out but not really he got out but not really card. And they already did it three times in this movie. He goes out through the window, he goes through the vent, and he goes out through the front door. Guy getting carried. If they did it a fourth or a fifth time, I just don't think I would care at all. [00:32:46] Speaker B: I'm hoping that the sequel is Samuel L. Jackson goes to find John Cusack and say, hey, you released the evil from the room by burning it down. It's now seeping into the rest of the hotel and even making its way through New York City or whatever. We need to stop this. Then they go on a mission. [00:33:04] Speaker A: They [00:33:04] Speaker B: go on a mission of, like, backstory to figure out what made the hotel room that way. And it leads them down a trail of psychotic, crazy stuff. That might be interesting, I think, but who knows? Honestly, I. I don't really want a sequel for this. [00:33:19] Speaker C: I don't want a sequel to this movie. [00:33:21] Speaker A: I agree there. [00:33:22] Speaker C: Not even in a this movie was terrible way. Just in a this, like, some movies are good singles. Some movies don't want sequels. [00:33:28] Speaker B: Yep. This is a one off, and I don't regret watching it, but certainly it doesn't merit a. A revisit. [00:33:35] Speaker C: Well, and like, if Sam Jackson comes up to me and he's like, oh, you released the hotel, the ghost, and now it's in every hotel room. Like, cool. I will not be staying at the Dolphin ever again. Good to know. Bye. Like, I'm not going back for nothing. I do like Will's idea of, like, he wants to go back, maybe not to save his kid, but just in like a. If that's the only way I can get more time with her. But I feel like that's probably more the demon pretending to be the kid than actually the kid, but. [00:33:59] Speaker A: 100, 100, [00:34:00] Speaker C: whatever. [00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:01] Speaker C: If you like what we do. And you want to help support us. Come join our Patreon. There's a link down below. Thank you to our producers as well as our executive producer Dino. And a huge shout out to our writers, Mrs. Hillary Real, Bubba, Hotep and Windstorm114 for picking 1408 first this week. Thank you very much. [00:34:20] Speaker B: So I had a pretty decent time with this movie. It was probably one of the better, scarier horror films that we've watched this month, but it didn't. I mean we didn't set a high bar with some of the stuff that we watched. I think that I do like Evil Dead Burn better than this one because the shots in Evil Dead Burn were amazing. This one just had decent everything. Everything in this was just kind of, kind of pretty good. Pretty good. The scares didn't get me. The horror didn't really get me, but I can't really fault that. It was a nice try. I think that this was an all around okay film and that's why I'm giving it a 60. I think if you're into scary movies, it's worth checking out. Just, you know, don't come into it with too high a hopes. It really dragged in the middle for me and had trouble keeping my attention. It was mostly the build up for the room and then the big finale. Everything in the middle was just kind of wasting my time. [00:35:18] Speaker C: I'm actually going to mirror a lot of what Brian just said. I mentioned that I saw this movie when it first came out and remembered nothing about it upon rewatch. It just nothing really stuck with me on this one. I really like the characters, I like the actors. I think John Cusack and Sam Jackson and Mary McCormick all did phenomenal jobs. I really like the portrayals. I like how we build the worlds. I like the way Sam Jackson builds up the hotel room. I like his interactions with the people throughout the movie. But pretty much every scene where it's just him in the hotel room, I'm just not buying it. It's. It's not really scary enough to be a scary movie. It's not really thriller enough. Like it kind of fails on both those sides of the spectrum. Like you have movies that are really psychological but not very terrifying or you get a movies that are really terrifying but it's just jump scares. And either one of those I can have fun with. And this just felt like it didn't quite hit the mark in either direction. Cinematography was good. Most of the. The effects looks pretty good. There's a couple here and there that are a little bit janky, but it's an older film. Overall, I had a decent time, but I fully imagine that I can watch this again for the very first time in about five years and not have remembered any of it then. I'm giving it a 64. [00:36:26] Speaker A: All right. Wow. I, you know what? 20 years ago I didn't love this movie. I thought, man, it was okay. I watched it again and I think I appreciated it more this time around much. I think as Daniel said, he did as well. But yeah, overall it's just like an okay movie. I think it's like a pretty average movie overall. It's not super scary. I don't think it's meant to be. But they throw some jump scares in there because that's Hollywood, baby. And I think John Cusack and Sammy Jackson do a really good job in this film. Cusack especially like he, he carries this film pretty much one handed throughout most of the picture and does a really good job of being like this, you know, broken guy who is sarcastic. He plays John Cusack, like, let's be honest. But he does a good job of playing a scared John Cusack later in the film. So it was well done, filmed well, directed well, the writing was quite good for what we got. You know, even though it leaves us with a lot of questions, I think that can sometimes be good. 70 out of 100. For me, it's like a perfectly average scary psychological thriller. [00:37:42] Speaker C: And with that we see 1408 coming in pretty low on our list of Patreon picks. But you know, 65 is not a terrible score for this one. It's just that we've got a lot of pretty solid movies having been chosen by the Patreon. So this one comes in with 64 from me, 60 from Brian, 70 from Will. As I mentioned, 65 overall, putting it below Romeo and Juliet, but better than the great outdoors. How do you guys feel about that placement? [00:38:08] Speaker A: Yeah, the placement's fine. I wish Rumble in the Bronx was above it, but Dan ruined that for my entire life. So aside from that, it's fine. It's looking good. Looking good. [00:38:17] Speaker B: Well, I mean, obviously I gave it a 60 in the great outdoors a 70. So I would much rather watch the Great Outdoors again than watch 1408. Two completely different genres though. Although I don't know, in the Great Outdoors he has to eat that steak and that's pretty scary otherwise. Otherwise, yeah, this is, this is fine. It's, it's on the list. It's there. It's kind of mid range Toward the bottom. I think it's about where it belongs. I'm really hoping that we get some, some real new hotness on our list because when we first started out on the Patreon, man, all of them were just high ranking bangers and we were really having a good time this last month. Other like, some of our viewers have even complained. It's like we're tearing everything apart. Everything's coming in kind of low numbers. This was on the low side. I was more optimistic for it coming into it. And then it's still a little bit low. So hopefully we get some really good Patreon picks come going forward. And again, I love it when it's a movie that I either haven't seen in a long time or haven't seen at all. Those are some of my favorites. So we'll see. If you, the viewer, want to help us out with that, then by all means become a Patreon member and throw your hat in the ring for what you want us to review. [00:39:28] Speaker C: I liked that for this movie at least we were able to point out some positives. It wasn't a purely negative. We were able to be like, no, we really enjoyed this, this and this. Just some of the execution didn't really work out well for us. Whereas some of the movies we've done recently have been pretty rough. I don't mind if the Patreon is a weird movie we've never heard of or seen before. I'm looking at no Escape. I'm looking at Dead Again. I'm even looking at Great Outdoors is one I hadn't really heard of before we did it. Like, those can be interesting conversations. I think it was just unfortunate that we had a bad franchise. A bad Patreon, a bad franchise. Like, it's kind of just been like a rough month and a half. I [00:40:07] Speaker B: mean, we are critics. We got to critique them, so we gotta be critical. [00:40:10] Speaker C: Sure. But if we had like a good franchise and then a bad Patreon, that could be a fun mix up or vice versa. It's the fact that we had like kind of Dud, Dud, Dud. He was like, okay, [00:40:20] Speaker B: yeah, [00:40:21] Speaker C: let's. [00:40:22] Speaker B: I mean, I enjoy, I enjoy talking about how bad a film is. Also, this film was. There was nothing horrible about this film. There was no one thing I can point at and say, this was terrible. There were just things that didn't do it for me, that's all. And [00:40:36] Speaker A: so that's fine. Yeah, that's what made this one harder for me to actually talk about because I was like, it's good enough to watch, but it's not great enough to critique all that much either. Right? [00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:40:48] Speaker A: I'd rather a lower low so I could really dig into it, or a higher high so I could really praise it, or [00:40:53] Speaker B: at least a point or two in the film that you could really tear apart. But there isn't anything you could really tear apart in [00:40:58] Speaker A: this. Nothing really wrong with it. [00:40:59] Speaker B: It's. It's okay. [00:41:00] Speaker C: I've said many times it, like, a great film is easy to talk about and a terrible film is easy to talk about. But an okay film, pretty rough. [00:41:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:11] Speaker C: All right, well, that's Our rating of 1408, but what's yours? Leave a comment down below. I'd love to hear what you have to say. We record this live every Thursday night at 9pm Eastern over at Twitch TV themongoolishow. So head over there and hit the follow button if you want to hang out with us live. Or if you made it this far in the video, you probably enjoyed it. Make sure you hit like and subscribe so we see you in the next one. Sam.