When I saw 1408 last year, I’d already been a fan of John Cusack I’m guessing since Grosse Pointe Blank 10 years previously – but it was still like having a veil lifted from my eyes as I realised, he wasn’t just cool, he was one of best actors I’d ever seen. It was only shortly after that that I heard the buzz around his performance here and that was it, I was sure he’d finally get an Oscar nomination.

Well, I wasn’t let down. Cusack’s performance here is completely overwhelming, everything that isn’t spoken playing off his face more eloquently and painfully than any words could muster. Clint Eastwood’s score is quietly brilliant too. Both, as I thought months ago before even seeing or hearing either, should’ve featured in this year’s Oscar nominations.

Though I hadn’t realised it, I think the reason my reviews have suffered a little lately is because I really badly needed a tearjerker like this to clear the system. The two girls who play Cusack’s daughters are amazing too – we almost seem to see them growing up on the screen before our eyes, so much do we come to know them and so well is it conveyed to us how important the days covered will be in their lives to come. They even get their ears pierced together midway. The ultimate effect of this is that when the moment comes that the movie is all about – dad finally finding the right time and the right words to tell his girls what has happened – even though we’re in possession of the facts from the start – it’s like finally we’re really being told too, and we take it just the same as the girls. It’s a beautiful, beautiful movie, and at 85 minutes it really proves they needn’t come much longer.

There isn’t much to add on seeing the Theatrical Cut of this to what I wrote below of the Director’s Cut except that, to my surprise, this (only slightly shorter: about 8 minutes as opposed to 30 I expected below) cut makes what I already found to be a fantastic movie even better. All the daughter stuff is there. I’ve read some comments about pacing being altered here and there but overall I didn’t notice any differences except in the ending, which is just infinitely more satisfying, creepy and thought-provoking. Apparently neither this cut nor even just the alternate ending are available on DVD in the UK which sucks. So it goes without saying, pay the little extra – and another little extra (a whole £1 on PlayUsa) for both cuts – watch the director’s cut as a curiosity, by all means but personally I’ll be coming back to the Theatrical Cut from now on.

10th October, 2007:

Addendum: Just realised, for the record so all the talk about running times etc below makes sense lol, yet again I’ve accidentally managed to see the Director’s Cut first.

Wow I kind of knew that this would be good, as most Stephen King short story adaptations are, as most John Cusack movies are … but I have to say my excitement was dulled a little by what looked like an overlong running time for such a movie, at almost 2 hours rather than the expected 90 minutes.

What I found was that the extra 30 minutes were the most pleasantly surprising, heartbreaking backstory of Cusack’s character that at once makes us plain care a little more about his plight, but at the same time bridges the gap between two halves vastly varied in tone, all the while making the movie infinitely more powerful than it has any real right to be. While the first half of this movie is almost pure comedy, all the jumps and scares done very knowingly with one-line snarky responses from Cusack, who wholeheartedly revels in it, the second half is chill, nightmarish, and quite honestly the scariest thing I’ve seen in quite some time (I’m inclined to say since The Sixth Sense but looking back over old reviews I’m reminded of The Skeleton Key and the original Saw).

1408 is certainly up there with Secret Window, The Green Mile, Misery, if not quite rubbing shoulders with Carrie and The Shining. The visuals are stunning, Gabriel Yared’s score alternates perfectly between Elfman-esque thrill-enhancement and his usual dreamlike emotional stuff. But those aren’t the things that really made the movie for me. I’ve always loved John Cusack … like, really loved, he’s one of the great Js, Johnny, Josh, Jared, Joseph, mm-hm but I digress … but here, I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s by far his greatest performance. In a world post-Johnny being nominated for Jack Sparrow, I swear – okay, I believe – Cusack should get a nomination for this role, it’s just sucks you in to every twitch he makes. That the movie also manages to successfully work its way past a bone fide “Then he woke up and it was all a dream,” scene (incidentally, just about around the 80-90 minute mark where I originally thought the movie should’ve ended), and my stomach only sank for a nano-second before I was sucked into the nightmare again, is pure icing on the cake. Definitely one I’ll watch again and again.