What happens when you get locked in?

Two hit movies recently gave us two different answers, in two very interesting scenarios. In the first one, 1408, John Cusack plays the role of Mike Enslin, a writer who specializes in staying in haunted places to rate each spot’s scare factor. Based on a short story by Stephen King, one of the most successful horror writers of all time, 1408 is touted to be the best-selling King movie as of yet.

In this film, Enslin finds himself fighting to get in Room 1408 of Dolphin Hotel in New York—and then fighting to get out. Room 1408 is an “evil, **cking room,” warns the hotel manager Gerald Olin, effectively portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson. “Nobody lasts an hour.” Enslin first finds out about the mysterious room through an anonymous postcard, on which is written, “Don’t stay in 1408.”

But of course, that’s exactly what he did, or there wouldn’t be a movie.

Olin does all that he diplomatically can (upgrade him to a suite, offer him expensive wine, show him the ledger of horrible deaths in Room 1408) to stop Enslin from staying in the evil room, but Enslin is a determined man with a lawyer, and so he gets his way.

What happens inside the room is really, for lack of a better word, weird. The room starts attacking Enslin—a window shuts down hard on his hand, the faucet shoots scalding hot water on it as he is washing it, the clock radio begins a sixty-minute countdown. At first, the things that start happening can be explained away as natural occurrences—the Dolphin Hotel is a century old, anyway. But then, Enslin starts experiencing even weirder things. An old video of his dead child starts playing in the hotel room television, and it sends him back to the beginning of his emotional downward spiral which had him abandoning his wife in New York. Then he starts seeing people walking to the window and leaping out, as if the room is telling him to follow their example.

I say these things are weird because they’re not really scary. I’ve seen scary, and it’s not being stuck inside a warp zone in a hotel room on the technically-thirteenth floor. So to follow Enslin’s manner of rating haunted places’ scare factor, I’d give this one five out of ten skulls.

It’s still a compelling movie. I mean, John Cusack is in his element (you know, smart, slightly messed up, your average guy-next door), while Samuel L. Jackson’s stellar in any role...but this one won’t keep you up at night.

In Disturbia, Shia LaBeouf plays Kale, a troubled teenager who’s still coping with guilt over his father’s death in a car accident. He punches his Spanish teacher and lands in house arrest, with a special ankle bracelet that limits him to a 100-yard radius within his house. Idle hands are a devil’s playground, so when his mother Julie, portrayed by Carrie-Ann Moss (it’s Trinity, y’all!), takes away his iTunes and his cable television, Kale resorts to spying on their neighbors. It’s all naughty at the beginning—he finds out their neighbor’s husband is having an affair with the maid, he checks out the hot new girl next door, he even spies on the dog. But his spying takes a serious turn when he picks up clues that his neighbor could be a serial killer the whole country is looking for.

Against better judgment, he and his friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) and the hot new girl next door Ashley (Sarah Roemer) start investigating their neighbor Mr. Turner’s activities. It was Operation Stupid, as Ronnie called it, from the very beginning. For starters, they didn’t have a plan of action in case Mr. Turner was indeed the serial killer.

Teenage idealism, tsk, tsk. But it did make for an exciting film. And he did get the hot girl in the end!

Shia LaBeouf is really on a roll. The last time I saw an actor break into the scene in such a huge way was when Orlando Bloom impressed us all as a platinum-haired, pointy-eared, sharp-shooting, wise-cracking elf. Since 2003, the hit films he has been on reads like a Hollywood actor’s dream: Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, I-Robot, Constantine, Bobby, Surf’s Up (as the voice of Cody Maverick), and Transformers. He will also be seen next year in the much-awaited Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

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