MORE THAN JUST GHOST LORE IN A
B A D PLACE: MIKAEL HAFSTROM’S
CINEMATOGRAPHIC TRANSLATION OF
STEPHEN KING’S SHORT STORY “1408”
At first, Mikael Hafstrom’s movie “ 1408” seems to be just another typical
ghost story: typical in the sense that it aims “to scare its readers” (Briggs, 11)
through a confrontation with the inexplicable that finds manifestation in the
restless souls of the dead re-entering the world of the living. This analysis,
however, shows that Hafstrom’s film goes beyond the features of a typical ghost
story portraying ghosts seeking revenge, demanding retribution, requiring the
completion of unfinished business, or correcting an injustice. Moreover, this
analysis illustrates that the film, which is loosely based on Stephen King’s short
story of the same title published in 2002, even goes beyond the author’s
unidentifiable textual gore expressed in the original text. It moves away from the
domineering “feelings of revulsion, disgust, and loathing” (Botting 124)
expressed in King’s text. Hafstrom’s individual use of the folkloric, spiritual,
and literary perception of ghosts together with his personal interpretation of
King’s literary text leads to a ghost story that despite some similarities with
other ghost stories is very different in its focus.
In Hafstrom’s film, the appearances fulfil two functions. On the one hand,
they are a symptomatic expression of the main character’s pathological
mourning and melancholy provoked by his daughter’s fatal illness. On the other
hand, they fu nction as a personification of the main character’s personal desire
for as well as fear of death. In this sense, Hafstrom’s adaptation of ghost lore
and of the literary source is a product of “mixture of repetition and difference, of
familiarity and novelty” (Hutcheon 114). Only through the interplay between the
past and present understanding of ghosts does Hafstrom actualize his own
perception of the invisible world of the dead in film, concretize his personal
interpretation of King’s horror tale, and visualize his psychological
understanding of a modem ghost story.
FROM FOLKLORE TO FICTION
In contrast to Stephen King’s short story “ 1408,” which plunges the reader
right into the horrifying events of room 1408 without ever specifying the
happenings’ origin or linguistically defining the strange phenomena, Mikael
Hafstrom’s cinematographic adaptation of the textual source offers an
independent understanding of the text’s bewildering “voice of the room” (King
499), the “whiff of burning sulphur” (King 501), the intense light “filling the
room with that yellow-orange glow” (King 500) and the “rips in the wallpaper
[and] black pores that quickly [grow] to become mouths” (King 500). Similar to