1408 - The Movie

*Spoiler alert - if you haven't watched the movie and intends to, please read NO further.

The movie is really quite freaky... simply because it's not something out there. If the writer encountered a spooky ghost or what not, it gradually loses it "scariness"... but if you are trapped in a time and place where there is no way out.... i think that's SCARY!!!

In the movie, John Cusack was a writer of haunted places, or ghost stories and travels to renowned haunted places to stay in the hotel and write about his encounters. Basically, he is a skeptic. He doesnt believe in ghosts or spirits because he hasn't seen one - he doesnt believe in things moving etc... and until he actually sees one, he's not convinced.

So off he goes to check out this hotel room which has been rumoured to be haunted and 56 people have died grisly deaths in the room. And what follows is a series of events that has a little of everything - things being moved, ghoulish apparitions, time warp, revisiting of his daughter's death and events etc...

I think what made it scary was that it wasn't that he saw something, or felt something but rather (as the husband pointed out) he was transported somewhere. When he entered the room, he entered a spirit realm. And he was trapped there.

And where he was trapped, was pretty much like hell (as the bible describes it). It is a place where time has no meaning (signified by the clock resetting) and there is no way out (except in his case, death). Hell is where each moment is agonizing, sad, lonely, helpless and the deep torment of hopelessness...and there is no reprieve.