豺遊民

身為一個恐怖小說家，Mike的做法跟一般人不同：沒錯，他專跑有各種恐怖傳言的旅店，卻都是去確認"世界上沒有幽靈"的事實。

偶然的機會下，他收到了一封明信片，上面簡單寫著：千萬別住進1408號房。正面則有著一個名為海鷗旅社(Dolphin Hotel)的風景圖。他笑了一下，不久馬上致電要求入住，卻被經理狠狠拒絕。求助於律師後，他成功的要黑人經理交出鑰匙，進了這間死亡人數已達５６間的惡魔之間。

進去不久，他被床頭的鬧鐘忽然唱起歌嚇了一跳。大膽的他相信這一定是有人故意作的把戲，卻找不到任何的人影。不久，鬧鐘忽然變成倒數的形式，時間為一小時。噩夢正式開始。

首先，他在身體進出窗戶時夾傷了手臂。血流不止，洗手台的水龍頭又只噴出又燙又熱的水。他急了，決定辦理退房，電話那頭的人卻跟他裝瘋賣傻。他看見對面有人影，趕忙招手求救，意外發現對面的人影居然是自己，而且背後有人正準備刺殺他。轉頭，看見自己的背後有一個人帶著面具拿著刀往自己刺來。好不容易躲到角落，人影消失了。

此後，他經歷了隔壁嬰兒無止盡的哭鬧聲、死去的父親出現在浴室、女兒死亡的過程在電視跟眼前上演...所有一切的一切都那麼突然又真實，毫無招架餘地。慌了，從窗戶逃出，卻發現整層樓的房間只剩下１４０８，所有其他的房間全部消失，自己彷彿在異次元。透過通風管，他爬到隔壁求救，眼前所出現的竟然是妻子剛懷女兒時的情景。逃回房間，他不知所措，想到也許無線網路能夠救他一命。

聯繫到了分居的妻子，房間卻開始漏水，電腦出現藍底白字畫面。在經過了零下的溫度後，電腦又重新連上線，卻有另一個他在線上要妻子來１４０８號房救他。通訊斷了，房間滲進了大洪水。

醒來後，他在洛杉磯的醫院，１４０８原來不過是南柯一夢。他完成了小說，準備拿去郵局快遞。此時的郵局正在整修著，工人們拆除著一面又一面的牆，也拆了地板，他仍然在１４０８。

回到了房間，傢俱變得殘破不堪，死去的女兒出現要Mike拯救，又在他的手中灰飛煙滅。倒在地上的他，只見鬧鐘的一小時倒數接近結束。時間到了，房間回復原樣，剛才那一個小時彷彿幻境。電話響了，那頭的聲音告訴他，你可以選擇自殺，也可以無盡的重覆那個小時。他並不退縮，卻在聽到妻子已經快到旅館時慌了手腳。靜下心來，靜下心來，就算要死，也要拖著這個房間去地獄，他拿出了經理送他的高級威士忌...

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改編自史蒂芬金的短篇小說，由約翰庫薩克主演(他跟他姐長的越來越像了)，是部可以歸類為老少咸宜的電影，不恐怖也不驚悚。

我所引用的海報是電影原聲帶的。坦白講，看完電影，首先覺得John這部演的不好，有些地方太過、有些地方不夠，有點力不從心的感覺。其次，電影的配樂實在不會給人什麼感覺，我連有沒有音樂這回事都不是很確定，這原聲帶真的會有人買嗎？為唱片公司小小的擔心一下。

電影真正的結局是Mike逃出１４０８後，太太幫他整理東西，他把有點燒融的錄音機拿出來聽，兩人都聽到女兒的聲音作為結尾。Well，是啦，讓太太相信自己真的有看到過世的女兒是很重要，不過這種結局真的好沒力啊！觀眾給這部片子7.6的成績(IMDB)，以恐怖片來說算是高分了，無怪乎有美國人說日本那套不恐怖，看來老外還是比較怕那種有生命危險的，不像我們怕那種慢慢來嚇的...

(07.07.30)

08.12.21追記

有網友提到我看的結局跟他看的不同，我上網做了一下功課。實際上這電影有兩個結局。戲院版的結局是重新拍攝的版本，導演原先預定的結局在試映時不被看好而有做修正，導演版結局只在DVD裡面可以看的到，以下附上導演版結局的英文內容，需要者可自行觀看。

The original ending, available exclusively on the Director's Cut edition, sees the backdraft engulfing the room as Enslin hides under the coffee table, happy to see the room destroyed as he dies. Olin later approaches Lily and Enslin's agent at his funeral, where he unsuccessfully attempts to give back a box of Enslin's possessions, telling her, relieved, that Enslin did not die in vain. Olin listens to the recording in his car, hearing Katie's voice on the tape; he jumps in surprise as he catches a quick glimpse of the now horribly burnt Enslin in his rear view mirror. Enslin now bears resemblance to a ghostly man that appeared in several other scenes, including the window/mirror scene and in the painting of the schooner. The scene then changes to an outside view of the gutted 1408, with an apparition of Enslin disappearing after being called away by the voice of his daughter and the sound of a closing door.

以下追記"1408"英文劇情，以彌補我當年劇情描寫未竟之遺憾。

Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a skeptic author who debunks supernatural occurrences after the untimely death of his daughter Katie. Before this event, he used to write fiction, and a woman at a book signing asks him to sign a copy of his first book, a novel called The Long Road Home. After finishing his latest successful book, he receives an anonymous postcard of the Dolphin Hotel in New York City bearing the message "don't enter 1408". Viewing this as a challenge, Enslin attempts to book a reservation for room 1408, but the hotel will not rent him the room. However, after being informed by Enslin's agent Sam Farrell (Tony Shalhoub) that the Fair Housing Act requires hotels to rent unoccupied rooms, the Dolphin reluctantly reserves room 1408 for Enslin.

Arriving at the Dolphin, Enslin is pulled aside by the hotel's manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), who warns him that no one has lasted more than an hour in 1408. Olin tries to be friendly with Enslin; he compliments him on The Long Road Home, offers Enslin an upgrade to the penthouse suite, an $800 bottle of cognac and access to documents regarding the deaths in 1408 if Enslin abandons his plan to stay in the room. When Enslin insists, Olin begins reciting the docet of carnage that includes seven jumpers, four overdoses, five hangings, three mutilations, two stranglings, one drowning and twenty-two natural deaths in room 1408. Enslin accepts the documents and the cognac but insists on staying in the room, frustrating Olin.

Once inside the room, Enslin pulls out his Mini Cassette recorder and dictates on the unremarkability of room 1408. As he examines the room, the clock radio suddenly starts blaring "We've Only Just Begun" by The Carpenters; he is startled, but dismisses it as a gag cooked up by Olin. When he calls for room service, the hotel operator agrees to requests Enslin didn't make, like ordering a sandwich or tickets to the Metropolitan Opera. Later, Enslin is startled again as the clock radio begins to play the same previous song. The clock's digital display scrambles to 60:00, and then starts counting down from 60 minutes. When he rips the clock's electrical cord from the wall, it continues to tick down.

Suddenly, Enslin is unable to hear anything, apart from a tinnitus-like ringing in his ears, and opens the window to check his hearing. The window slams down, cutting a large gash in the top of his hand. His hearing quickly returns and he goes to the bathroom to clean his hand, but is burned by the hot water blasting out of the faucet under incredible pressure. He then bandages his hand using a bandanna from his bag. Wishing to go to a hospital, Enslin attempts to leave the room; however, his key breaks off in the door and gets sucked out of the keyhole. The doorknob subsequently breaks off in his hand, trapping him inside 1408. Trying to find a way out, he sees a man in an apartment looking at him. Relieved, Enslin waves to him. The man waves back. Enslin motions calling the police; the man motions as if in confirmation. Enslin, noticing that the man mimics his actions exactly, picks up a lamp. The man does as well. Just as Enslin realizes it was a trick conjured up by the room, a woman creeps up behind the man across the street, picks up a stick and lifts it over her head, preparing to attack the man. Enslin whips around to face an old, seemingly deranged man brandishing a club. Then, just as suddenly he appeared, the man disappears.

Enslin begins to see and hear things, including visions of his daughter's time in the hospital shortly before her death, but he initially dismisses them as hallucinations, possibly due to a drug in the cognac. He makes several attempts to free himself from the room, such as trying to crawl outside on the ledge to the next room or crawling through the air vents, but logic-defying events (such as all other windows on the hotel's exterior disappearing, and a desiccated corpse chasing him through the ventilation shafts) prevent him from succeeding, all the while being assaulted by horrifying illusionary apparitions of 1408's former victims. Several times, he has illusions about his past traumas: he encounters his late, invalid father in a hospital room (whom he may have alluded to when he described a plot element of The Long Road Home), sees a memory of his family when Katie was still alive and re-witnesses Katie's death. Finally, he is literally trapped inside 1408 when the door and one of the windows are blocked by brick walls and the other window disappears. He manages to contact his estranged wife Lily (Mary McCormack) via video chat, but the conversation ends abruptly when the sprinkler system shorts out his laptop. All the while the room temperature drops, eventually to subzero temperatures. However, his laptop starts working again and he hears Lily calling out to him via video chat, but a doppelgänger of him hijacks the conversation, urging Lily to come to the hotel immediately and enter room 1408. As Enslin desperately tries to tell his wife not to come, the room begins to shake violently, and water explodes and floods out of a painting of a schooner lost at sea, pulling Enslin under the surface.

Enslin wakes up on the beach, the result of a surfing accident depicted earlier in the film. He soon finds Lily at his bedside in a hospital near his home in Los Angeles; she tells him that he was hospitalized after sustaining a concussion, leading him to conclude 1408 was just a dream. This reprieve is short-lived, however, when at the post office to mail a manuscript of his latest book (with a story about 1408) to his agent, a construction crew made up of hotel staff and guests begin to destroy the interior, revealing the walls and floor of 1408 underneath, now severely fire-damaged. He is still trapped inside 1408. Enslin then encounters his dead daughter, but as he emotionally embraces her she dies in his arms, then crumbles to dust as the clock radio's countdown approaches zero. Enraged, Enslin lashes out against what remains of the room until he falls to the floor, exhausted. When the clock radio finally reaches zero, the room changes back to its original, undamaged appearance.

The clock radio resets for another 60 minutes and the phone rings; when Enslin answers, the friendly female voice of the hotel operator informs him that he can relive the hour "again and again" or choose to take advantage of their "express checkout system". A noose appears in the bedroom and Enslin has a vision of him hanging himself; he tells the operator that he will not be checking out that way. The phone rings again, and the operator reminds him that his wife will be arriving in 5 minutes and will be sent right up to his room. He responds he is done arguing and is going to end the experience. When he puts down the phone, it starts to melt and a grave sounding voice starts reciting numbers and tries to dishearten Enslin.

Using a torn bit of his bandanna to turn the cognac into a Molotov cocktail, Enslin sets the room on fire, causing the hotel to be evacuated. Lily arrives just seconds afterwards and is stopped from entering the hotel, but tells the firefighters that Enslin is in 1408. Meanwhile, as the room tries to extinguish the fire, Enslin breaks a window with an ashtray, causing a huge backdraft that engulfs 1408. The firefighters force entry into the room and rescue Enslin as he curls under the coffee-table, delighted that the room is dying. Enslin recovers in a New York hospital, Lily at his bedside. He swears that he saw Katie, but Lily refuses to believe him. After his recovery, Enslin moves back in with Lily, beginning work on a new novel that has nothing to do with his previous cheap haunted sites series. While sorting through a box of items from his night in 1408, Enslin comes across his mini cassette recorder. After some difficulty he manages to get the tape to play; it begins with Enslin's dictation of 1408's appearance, but cuts in with audio from his interaction with the apparition of his daughter. Lily freezes in shock as she hears her dead daughter's voice coming from the tape recorder, and the film closes on Enslin meeting her shocked stare with one of grim vindication.

(維基百科，我真的愛死你了)