Books2Movies Club discussion

Everything's Eventual by Stephen King is a collection of stories from which we'll read this month only one, 1408. It was adapted to screen in 2007. It's worth mentioning that there are two different endings of the movie - check them both, who knows, maybe your opinion of the movie might shift for better (or worse) after seeing them both. Of course, it might be wiser to read the original story first... Or not, if you like to watch movies without knowing a thing about them :)

Compared to the movie in some ways I found the story disappointing and a bit of a let down. It was a well crafted story and was compelling to read but I wanted so much more from the actual haunting. The episode in the room within the story was rather short lived and anti-climatic for me.

On another note, I looked up the alternate endings and I saw the movie in the theater but I could have sworn that in the movie his character died in the room but what I read said that in the theater version he lived and in the DVD version he died.

It has been a while so I could me misremembering.

In the story, he lives...his setting himself on fire is what allows him to escape the room, apparently. I don't know if the getting close to death allows the room to release him, or the sensation of the flames is what brings him to his senses, or what, but somehow that act is supposed to have saved him. Plus he keeps the guy who put out the flames from going into the room to investigate, thereby presumably saving him, as well.

I don't like horror stories, although I did find this interesting. I like what the hotel manager, Olin, says, that there aren't any ghosts in it, but some kind of presence. It's like your own fears attack you, rather than any ghost of previously alive human beings. I wonder if he's more "set up" for it because of what Olin says than he would have been otherwise? I totally would have been freaked out by Olin's stories, whether they were true or not, and would never have stayed there. But I'm a big wuss :)