Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

John Cusack - a great actor - is very good as the protagonist of this story: an once honest author who now makes up stories about haunted hotels. So he is a non believer... and when faced with a hotel room everybody fears, it is obvious that he knows there's nothing in there except the imagination of those who enter the room.

That is a great premise... but here it fails completely because the film does not offer anything interesting, scary or simply offbeat to surprise the audience.

It all starts beautifully, as Cusack spends the first few minutes in the room and discovers there is something there that puts chocolate on his bed and replaces toilet paper... and turns on the radio that plays The Carpenters.

But that's all... in a few minutes, the room becomes a roller coaster ride... ghosts can be seen jumping out the window... a window closes on Cusack's hand... the key breaks... and soon he discovers he is in one of those places in movies that we hate: a kind of parallel universe where anything goes: it rains... strange noises... it gets too cold... he sees his dead father... he sees his dead daughter... the wall has cracks and drips blood (how unoriginal!)... it snows... the paintings on the wall seem to move... the room gets flooded... the TV shows things... the radio keeps playing while unplugged... etcetera.

We've seen it all before and it is all harmless like the haunted house in Disneyland.

What I hate the most here is that the horror of this film is just a stupid sequence of idiotic tricks. Look: it's a guy locked in a hotel room for one hour. What fabulous ideas are there that turns this constriction into an advantage? None.

Nothing scary here. This is a badly conceived project. Not all horror books can turn into great horror films.

I got this movie free with my pepsi points and was surprised its actually a pretty good movie.Was worth spending my points on but wish that pepsi had more good movies on dvd to get there really isn't much for choices.