Check out scary ‘1408’ – but don’t check in

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

Lock the door.

Cut the lights.

Cue scary noises.

Unleash the frights.

To “The Shining’s” Overlook Hotel, “Barton Fink’s” Hotel Earle and the Eagles’ Hotel California, add “1408’s” Dolphin Hotel to the list of hostelries where you really, really don’t want to check into. It’s another of those places where you may never leave … alive. Or sane.

Like the Overlook, the Dolphin is a lodging sprung from the imagination of Stephen King. From the horror king’s short story, Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom (“Derailed”) and credited screenwriters Matthew Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have fashioned a very effective chiller.

It’s a simple story, really. A smarty-pants author who makes a living writing guidebooks debunking haunted-house myths checks into Room 1408 at Manhattan’s Dolphin. The room has a reputation.

In the hotel’s 95-year history, 56 guests have checked out in 1408 … permanently. Window dives. Slashings. Gashings. Gougings. You name it. Occupants have done it. Or have been done in thereby.

The hotel’s well-tailored and suave but menacing manager, played by a gimlet-eyed Samuel L. Jackson, warns that “no one has ever lasted more than an hour” in 1408. It is, he asserts, “an evil (insert Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite expletive here) room.”

Full of skepticism and chutzpah, the smarty-pants scribe, played by John Cusack, demands the key, lets himself in and … well, to say much more would spoil the jolts and creepy occurrences that Hafstrom and his writers have put on the menu. Let’s just say that spectral presences, bleeding walls, stuck doors (he can’t get out) and unsettling sounds (particularly unnerving: a baby’s shrieks) are just the warm-up acts.

The key to a movie like this is pacing. Build the frights gradually. Chip away at the character’s (and the audience’s) peace of mind relentlessly. Disorient and disturb ceaselessly.

Hafstrom is masterful in this regard. He doesn’t hurry, but he doesn’t back off once he starts ratcheting up the scares.

A sympathetic victim is essential, and Cusack becomes one after his abrasiveness is sanded away by his ordeal and information about a psychologically scarring occurrence in his past comes to light. His bravado hides a brokenness of spirit.

Add in a Mephistophelean presence like Jackson, cultured and formidably forceful in a few key scenes, and you’ve got a well-crafted fright machine.

The picture does seem to be gasping for breath a bit at the end with a few too many fake endings. But for most of the way “1408” delivers the haunted-hotel goods with skill and style.

1408 * * *

Director: Mikael Hafstrom

Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack, Jasmine Jessica Anthony

Running Time: 1:34

Rating: PG-13; language, terrifying images