I just came from a holiday in New York, where I stayed in the Dolphin hotel… The corridor of the… hmm… 15th or 12th floor (I’ve forgotten the floor already, it’s kinda irrelevant to the holiday, except that you get a better view of the brickwall from the window of a higher floor) was a lot scarier than that of the film’s 13th floor. So if the room numbers on the 13th floor start from 1400, how about the 14th floor?

I don’t know how much of the film they actually shot in hotel Pennsylvania, probably the entrance, maybe the lobby, but that’s got to be it really… still, I felt I’d been there at the scene of the film.

Sadly, the film wasn’t that good. Stephen King has never been very lucky when it comes to films. The Shining is brilliant, so is Dolores Clairborne, I enjoyed Misery, even somehow found Maximum Overdrive funny. I can even watch Christine all the way through. But he has been quite busy writing and getting films made. The film made me think there’s enough material for a short film, but then again, if I got it right, it’s based on a SHORT story… and seems to follow the structure of a short story as well, which is good enough for a feature film I suppose, but surely you need quite a lot of content for 90 minutes of scary movie.

There’s a couple of shockers, but not really that much. Samuel L. Jackson is ok, but hasn’t got much screen time. Cusack’s performance could have been better, but there’s not much to play with. I just kept thinking that if this was on telly, I’d change the channel. Even the poster is pretty dull.