A few years ago I was nostalgic for John Cusack’s film “Hotel Hell”, 1408. I had seen it in the cinema and it somehow stuck in my mind. I think a lot of people feel that way. Cusack tries all the possible ways we would go to get out of that haunted hotel room and nothing works. The futility permeates everything. But when I finally watched it again, this time via streaming, I was confused. That was not the ending I remembered. Was I wrong? Was this another case of the Mandela Effect in a horror movie? It turns out that if you streamed, 1408then you may have picked the wrong ending. Spoiler alert!
The cinema ending
Haunted house novelist Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is asked to write about a spooky hotel room in an otherwise non-haunted hotel. The room is 1408, and the staff doesn’t want him to stay there. Despite his insistence, he ends up in the fateful room. Unfortunately, spooky things happen there, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t get out.
However, after destroying the hotel room, he finally manages to crawl out. He is back with his wife and she is skeptical about what happened to him in room 1408. He finds the tape recorder he was using in the room and turns it on. To her great shock, the voice of her deceased daughter Katie comes from the recorder. The end.
The alternative ending
In the alternate version, which is actually the director’s favorite, Enslin dies after destroying room 1408. Hotel manager Olin (Samuel L. Jackson) attends Enslin’s funeral. He is happy that someone has finally put an end to the horror of that horrific room. As Olin gets back into his car, he briefly sees Enslin in the rearview mirror in the back seat. Then we see Enslin again in the burned-out room, smoking a cigarette. He hears his daughter calling for him and goes off to find her. He disappears when he reaches the door.
This is the depressing ending that many of us found, to our confusion, when streaming the film.
But…why?
As it turns out, the alternate ending of 1408 was supposed to be the original ending. This was director Mikael Håfström’s preferred ending. But when he showed the cut to test audiences, it just didn’t resonate with them. They didn’t like that Enslin didn’t make it out of the hotel room. And even in Stephen King’s original story, Enslin was alive at the end. Although Håfström wasn’t happy with that, he reshot the ending so he stayed alive, and that was the version we saw in the theater.
But when it came time to release the film on DVD and streaming, the director quietly decided to use his alternate ending. There was no warning on the theatrical box or in the movie synopses, so many of us were confused that we were seeing a complete ending we didn’t remember. Now, some streaming services have the theatrical version and others have the alternate ending. And you usually won’t know which one it is unless you read reviews/comments or test it out for yourself.
