Directed by Mikael Håfström, 1408, like The Shining, is based on a Stephen King story and bears the same relationship to the earlier movie that a hastily-shoveled hole in the dirt has to a gleaming platinum commode with a fleece-cushioned seat and a zirconium-encrusted flush handle; a lot of shit goes down in both, but that’s about all they have in common.

In 1408, John Cusack barely has to act through the role of yet another world-weary, knowing hipster. He’s a jaded, cynical writer of trashy haunted hotel guide books who hasn’t yet encountered the real thing in his travels to hotels all over America. One day, he receives a mysterious post card which prompts him to check in to Room 1408 at The Dolphin, in New York, a city that he hasn’t visited since – well, since Significant Events in his Character Backstory transpired. At The Dolphin he meets the hotel manager, played by Samuel L Jackson, who for once isn’t running around being kick-ass and shooting stuff up. Instead he stands around, trying to scare Cusack’s character away from Room 1408, acts urbane yet kick-ass and hands over Significant Plot Tokens in the form of a folder with death-scene photos of all the people who have died in the room before, and a bottle of pricey booze.

Armed with these and the usual Hawaian shirt aging hipsters wear with their otherwise black garb, Cusack’s character gamely trots off to Room 1408, where the shit is set to go down.

And go down it does. It’s like a greatest hits collection of best moments from past haunted house stories, only with the intros and solos removed to get us to the chorus quicker. Mysterious, distraught, suicidal ghosts – check. Mysterious, distraught and threatening or plaintive ghosts of figures from the protagonist’s past – check. Uncooperative windows, radios and air conditioning – check. Vaguely menacing paintings on the wall that seem to take on a sinister life of their own – check. The gang’s all here, let the haunting begin! Seriously, they’ve thrown in everything except the kitchen sink – and that’s only because they threw in a bathroom sink instead.

In a remarkably short period of time, the lead character’s slick demeanor is shed as he is literally forced to confront the ghosts of his past, and come to terms with it. In the process he also manages to sustain levels of injuries that would do a villain in a Home Alone movie proud. His supernatural encounters become increasingly threatening and extreme, taking him through an analog of the various levels of hell described in cheery tour books like Dante’s Inferno. Finally, after the plot has tracked back and forth for a while, and interest and comprehension levels have long plummeted to oblivion, Cusack’s character sets the room on fire, which fans of King’s work will know is the signal that all will be well. In too many of King’s novels, the end-game of the story is resolved by the protagonist committing some major act of destruction which presumably destroys the evil stuff once and for all – gunpowder is far more efficacious than holy water or garlic in these stories – and from which he emerges only temporarily scathed into a fairy-tale like happy ending. It’s often a jarring effect when King tries it in print, and it’s jarring here, too, except that the sense of sheer relief brought on by knowing that our long ordeal is over tends to overwhelm any sort of disappointment at having sat through a movie which substitutes collapsing masonry and a cheesily redemptive character arc for real unease and terror.

The movie is decently-enough put together as these things go, with nothing distasteful on display – although who knows, a little gore might have saved this bland mess from total inanity. As it stands, the difference between a haunted hotel and a haunted hotel room is very great – as great as the difference between 1408 and a really good horror movie.