You can’t go anywhere these days without bumping into a Stephen King adaptation, as the prolific author’s work is constantly mined for new movies and TV shows, a trend that’s been going on for over 40 years at this point. The results have been about as inconsistent as you’d expect, bringing us classics like The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile along with disasters such as The Dark Tower and Dreamcatcher, but 1408 remains one of the most severely underrated.
The psychological thriller is a good old-fashioned two hander starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, with the plot following an author who specializes in debunking the supernatural. After checking into a hotel and failing to heed the warnings of the manager, a stay in a supposedly haunted room leads to a series of bizarre and unexplainable events.
Both Cusack and Jackson deliver solid performances, and 1408 scored generally enthusiastic reviews from critics and was a modest success at the box office, where it raked in almost $135 million against a $25 million production budget. One of the more overlooked entries in the Stephen King back catalogue, Cusack admitted in a recent interview that he’d love the chance to return for a sequel, saying:
“I haven’t really done sequels as much. I did a couple of loose sequels, where I felt like I had something else to say with the character but you can’t get the rights, so you just do another version of it. I did that a couple of times. I always thought there was another version of 1408, where he could wake up back in the room and continue on. That’s just getting into that Stephen King headspace. He’s such a terrific writer, and I do love like that Rod Serling psychological horror.”
The 54 year-old recently suggested a third ending for the movie in addition to the one tacked onto the theatrical version and the one attached to the Special Edition home video release that a lot of people prefer. But regardless of what conclusion makes for the better one, with the King renaissance still in full flow, there are far worse ideas out there than bringing back John Cusack to reprise his role in a long-delayed sequel to 1408.