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1408 2007 ★★★★
I loved every minute of it. Thanks toJordi Ostir for giving me the idea to go in for a rewatch. Because this is a great film, a great film and certainly one of the best King-adaptations out there.
The build up alone is amazing. The tension between the cheeky, smarmy writer and the maître d' is palpatable and makes you wonder if anyone does exasperation better than Samuel L Jackson.
But when he gets to the room... holy moly. Everything is done to perfection. The radio that starts playing by itself, giving a great callback to Poltergeist. Or the references to the people who died and/or killed themselves in there. Or how the room seems capable of reading your mind and then turning your biggest fears and your deepest traumas on you and using them to drive you crazy.
Or even the jump scares. Normally a tired trope which only serves to annoy people and get an eyeroll when done by less imaginative filmmakers.
1408 sucks you in, wether you want to or not and a lot of the credit goes to John Cusack. Carrying a movie on your own is a most difficult task for any actor, but Cusack pulls it off wonderfully. Making you completely buy his descent into madness.
The only point of criticism I could imagine was that you could see the end of the hallucination coming. But the whammy with the tape player makes up for that.
Mama 2013 ★★★
A Guillermo Del Toro production and it shows. It does have a certain terrifying supernatural atmosphere. And director Andy Muschetti does a good job bringing it to the screen.
It has a lot of qualities. The moment in the opening bit with the father intending to kill his daughter is touching, as is the separation between the two sisters.
Once the girls move in with the main characters, the story gets going. It certainly has scary moments, especually with Jessica Chastain's character. A few moments and a bit of an underwhelming ending kept from four stars.
Maybe it will win the fourth star on a rewatch. Who knows?
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