Screen to Scream: 1408 and Will Haunt You

If you’re reading this, you probably understand that people like to be scared (and that might even include you). For examples of this, go to any theme park and see all the rides that take people through loops, hairpin turns, or vertical drops. There are also in some parks, maybe off the Midway, the haunted house, a place that promises a different kind of fear. Rather than stripping you of control and treating you like a sock in a washing machine, haunted houses add to the terror by letting a series of threats, both supernatural and psychotic, have at you. Just like with most thrill rides, we know there’s no real danger. Just like rides are rigorously tested to make sure they stay together, the threats in haunted houses are simply costumed actors told to act as scary as possible. But what if the threat wasn’t just an act? What if the threat was real? And what if you couldn’t escape? Consider the movie 1408, based on the short story by Stephen King, and Brian Kirk’s recent novel Will Haunt You. 

1408 puts writer Mike Enslin, who writes about supernatural places but is himself a skeptic, discovers the reputation of room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel and investigates (or rather goes there to churn out another nonfiction bestseller). But this room holds a great deal of supernatural malevolence that begins with a countdown of 60 minutes and the playing of “We’ve Only Just Begun,” which is easily the most frightening the Carpenters’ music has ever been. The room not only has its share of ghosts but it also brings forth what haunts Enslin, his dead daughter. The movie is a gradual exercise not only in the gradual loss of sanity but in the loss of faith that the world is a sane and rational place. Mike soon can no longer trust what he sees and hears. The only thing he can do ultimately is keep his eyes on the clock, but even this is proven futile.

Will Haunt You employs a similar method of torture on its protagonist, Jesse Wheeler, frontman for a band formerly on top, former addict, and currently suffocating family man. What traps Jesse in his personal nightmare is not a room, but a book he had the misfortune to read. What began as a reunion gig descends into a nightmare where his will, his sobriety, and his love for his family is tested. Like Mike, who carries the loss of his daughter, Jesse shoulders his own mental and spiritual burdens, a life lived in excess that has hurt the ones he loves, and like the hotel room, the people after Jesse use their knowledge of his inner failings with a scalpel’s precision, slicing the things away that he’s earned that has made him a better man, if not always a happy one. Both book and movie offer a funhouse of frights, but these men bring their own demons to haunt them. The room/book just has to open these men up, show them a mirror, and let them see what’s inside.