The short story’s limited length means that Enslin suddenly waking up outside the room would be a blatantly obvious misdirect, whereas the movie adaptation can convince viewers that 1408 couldn’t possibly be a chamber piece from start to finish, only for the movie to twist the knife once again. The twist is more ambitious than anything in the original King story and only works because viewers assume that the entire movie can’t be contained in one room, meaning they’re shocked when it is.

Related: How Firestarter Can Avoid Pet Sematary’s Stephen King Remake Mistakes This keeps him busy for a few months until the Stephen King protagonist takes his novel to the post office to send his editor a manuscript - only for the post office’s walls to fall around him as 1408 reveals that this whole imaginary future was a mirage, and he’s still in the room.

He’s still troubled by the events of the hotel, but he’s starting to recover, and while having lunch with his ex-wife, he’s convinced to write a book about the traumatic experience he had in the titular room. There is an audacious sequence near the end of act two wherein 1408 cuts to Enslin’s life after his haunted hotel stay. Adapted from King’s collection Everything’s Eventual, 1408 might be based on a short story, but unlike many feature-length adaptations, the underrated movie makes the most of its source material and manages to make its premise even more compelling than the original tale. This is what makes 2007’s lone-location psychological horror 1408 such an underrated success story. The same thing that makes King’s writing so effective is what makes his style hard to render faithfully on screen, with many directors and screenwriters opting to cut the realistic character detail or the more outre horror elements and ending up with a project that never feels like classic King. Related: The Boogeyman: Everything We Know About The Stephen King Adaptation Many filmmakers can’t recapture the delicate tonal balance of King’s horror writing, wherein the realities of divorce and eviction can exist alongside a monstrous shape-shifting demonic clown or a haunted talking telephone.

The author’s writing contrasts sequences of broad, sometimes borderline surreal horror with much more grounded character detail. It is not hard to see why many screenwriters and directors struggle to adapt King’s work.

Everything's eventual 1408