Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is an author who makes his living churning out paperback books of "true hauntings" (examples such as Ten Haunted Graveyards and Ten Haunted Mansions). He has never found evidence of ghosts or anything supernatural in all his investigations, and is jaded and cynical, and seemingly without any close friendships or family.
After narrowly escaping injury whilst going surfing, Enslin receives a postcard in the mail, picturing the Dolphin Hotel in New York. It is not signed, but says on the back, "Don't Enter 1408." Doing some research, he discovers that anyone and everyone who has ever stayed in the hotel room in question has mysteriously committed suicide whilst in it. Curious, he calls the Dolphin, and attempts to book the room, but the hotel refuses him, insisting that it is permanently "unavailable". After getting the lawyer at his literary agency involved, the Dolphin is forced to rent the room to Enslin. Upon his arrival at the hotel, he is pulled into a private meeting with the hotel's manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), who does his best to convince Enslin not to stay in 1408, going so far as to offer him bribes, warning him that in 1408, "No one's ever lasted more than an hour", and that in addition to the suicides a number of the people who have stayed in the room have died inexplicable natural deaths. Enslin remains firm about staying in 1408, and Olin reluctantly escorts him to the room.
Once inside, Enslin pulls out his cassette recorder, and comments
on how there initially appears to be nothing out-of-the-ordinary about the room. As he leans out the window to record his thoughts on the view of the city, the clock radio on the night table suddenly starts blaring "We've Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters. Bumping his head on the windowpane, he turns to discover that chocolates have appeared on his pillow. Thinking that it is a trick being played on him by Olin, he searches the room, but finds no one. He then finds that the air-conditioning is broken, stuck near 80°F. He calls up an engineer to fix it. Meanwhile he uses a fluorescent light to observe where blood-stains have been washed off in the room; he notices that a painting on the wall has became tilted and sets it straight. The engineer then arrives. He refuses to enter the room out of fear and instead instructs Mike on how to fix it himself from the doorway. Enslin fixes it and thanks the engineer, only to find he has disappeared down the hall.
Sitting on the bed, the clock radio suddenly blares "We've Only Just Begun" again, before the numbers scramble, and begin a countdown from 60:00. Enslin is scared, remembering Olin's warning that no one has ever survived more than an hour in the room, but is distracted by realizing that he is suddenly deaf, only hearing a whirring buzz inside his head. He leans out the window again and regains his hearing, only to have the window slam down on his hand, hurting it badly. He goes into the bathroom to wash it, only for the tap to suddenly spray his hand with boiling hot water. He tries to plug it with towels, before smashing it by kicking it. He goes into the bedroom again and the clock once again starts blaring "We've Only Just Begun". Enslin rips it out of the wall, but whilst the music stops, the countdown doesn't. He then receives a call from room service regarding a meal that he has not asked for, and he shouts at the receptionist that he is injured, about to check out, and that she needs to call him an ambulance, but the phone only talks randomly about various hotel services. The phone call disconnects, and Enslin hangs up, quickly gathers his things, and races for the door. When he tries to unlock the door with the room key, the key breaks off in the lock. He picks the lock with a knife, only to have the doorknob fall off when he grasps it. He pounds on the door to try to break it down, or alert someone outside, but nothing works. He is trapped in 1408.
Trying to signal he needs help to someone outside through the window, he sees a man in a room in a building directly across from him. Attempting to request help from him, he then realizes t
hat the man is a doppelganger of himself, imitating whatever movements he makes. Suddenly, an image of a killer wielding an ice pick, one of the room's former inhabitants, approaches the doppelganger from behind and murders it. Enslin looks to his right to discover the killer there; slashing at him. He backs away frantically, only for the killer to suddenly disappear. He attempts to signal help again by dropping a lamp out of the window, but it disappears upon hitting the ground. He then hears a young girl's voice calling for her "daddy", it is revealed later to be that of his daughter. His thoughts become disordered and paranoid, and he briefly suspects that Olin put drugs in the alcohol he served him during their meeting and that he is hallucinating.
The TV then turns on by itself and shows Enslin playing with his now estranged wife, Lily, and aforementioned daughter, Katie. Distraught, he places his hand against the screen against his daughter's face, only for it to turn off. He then sees apparitions of the room's former occupants looking at him, solemnly, before jumping out of the window. Then he hears noises coming from the bathroom, and goes in to find it is a completely different bathroom and his father (with whom it is suggested he has a strained relationship) sitting in a wheelchair muttering to himself. He attempts to talk to him, and he claims that "As you were... I was. As I am... you will be." before the room returns to normal, albeit with blood now running out of the sink. Enslin ponders as to whether it is all a dream. He then notices that cracks have appeared in one of the walls and are leaking black fluid.
Enslin then has an idea to escape the room by climbing along the ledge outside the window to the opposite room. When he tries, however, all the other windows disappear, and he is forced to go back. Another apparition of a former room occupant leers out the window and startles him, almost causing him to fall, before leaping out and disappearing. He manages to pull himself back i
n just as the windowpane slams shut. He looks at the floorplan of the hotel on the door to discover that it has changed and marks 1408 as the only room in the hotel, right in the middle of the structure. The lights then flicker on and off, and he looks to the windows to discover they have been bricked up, with one of the bricks having the words "BURN ME ALIVE" written on it. He hears a noise coming from another room in the suite, and goes to see a vision of himself and Lily arguing about Katie, of whom it is revealed that a few years ago prior to the movie contracted cancer and died at the age of ten. The lights then flicker to red and he hears Katie calling him for help, before they return to normal. Suddenly the ice pick-wielding killer from earlier appears in the mirror and Enslin whips around, only to find no one there. He then discovers that the temperature in the room has dropped down to around 40°F.
Enslin attempts to call for help on his mobile phone but there is no signal. He then tries his laptop, and manages to get ahold of Lily via video chat. They have not seen each other in a year, and she immediately begins venting at him for leaving her without a word, while he tries to explain his situation to her, and get her to call the police. The room's fire-sprinkler system then activates on its own, and shorts out his laptop, leaving him trapped once again.
He then attempts to escape through the air-conditioning ducts. Looking down through the grates which should lead into the adjacent rooms, he only sees Lily with an infant Katie, and he and his father arguing in a park about his writing. He then discovers a corpse lying in the ducts, and realizes it is another of the room's former occupants, Kevin O'Malley. The corpse then comes alive and chases him; Enslin kicks its face and it disintegrates. He then crawls back into the room, his escape-attempt again thwarted.
Enslin looks in the refrigerator for a drink, only to see a vision of Olin in his office, taunting him. Enslin demands to know what he wants, but Olin persists in asking Enslin what he wants
, and questions the morality of his writings given the false-hope they give to fans. Enslin flies into a rage and attempts to attack Olin but the refrigerator returns to normal. Enslin then looks in the bible from his bedside table to find the pages have gone blank. He then sees another vision of himself and Lily with Katie in hospital in the past, in which Katie asked him if heaven and God were real; and he told her that they are, though he himself actually wasn't/isn't sure. Afterwards he and Lily fought about whether telling her such things was the right thing to do as opposed to egging her on to fight the cancer, and broke up. The fax machine then rings, and Enslin receives through it a dress of Katie's.
The room's temperature drops to below zero and freezes over. Enslin, having now all but lost his sanity, curls up in the comforter from the bed with a fire burning, and begins to mumble disjointed nonsense into his recorder. His laptop suddenly reactivates, and he hears Lily calling to him from the chat program. She tells him that she sent the police to the hotel, but they have told her that 1408 is empty. She says that she will come to the hotel to help him herself instead. Enslin insists that she stay put, knowing that if she enters the room she will wind up in the same ordeal he is undergoing, but a picture of himself showing what Lily is seeing and hearing appears on the screen and it tells Lily to please come to the hotel and come directly to 1408. It then grins and winks triumphantly at the real Enslin, and the conversation ends. An earthquake then occurs and the room starts destroying itself, with the walls and ceilings cracking and the floor rupturing. A storm starts pouring into the room, and the formerly banal paintings on the walls change into horrific versions. A painting with a ship sailing in calm waters turns into one of the ship in a storm with the ice-pick wielding killer on the deck; Enslin strikes the painting and the wall collapses and water pours into the room. Enslin finds himself drowning and being tossed by waves, before finding himself washed up on a beach.
Apparently, the entire experience in room 1408 was just a dream he suffered after nearly getting injurred whilst surfing, back at the start of the film. He awakes in hospital with Lily by his side. Enslin and Lily reconcile and begin to rebuild their relationship, and he finds his passion for writing renewed. He also goes to a nursing home and reconciles with his father. After repeating the research he did at the start of the film, he discovers that the Dolphin Hotel does not actually even exist. Everything seems happy. However, when he goes to the post office to mail his latest manuscript to his agent, he discovers the post office is staffed entirely by people that he remembers from the hotel. They begin tearing down the post office, revealing 1408 to be underneath it. Apparently the entire experience was not a dream after all.
The room appears to have been ravaged by a fire. He goes to a cupboard and sees a vision of Katie's coffin burning in a crematorium. A door appears behind him; he opens it only to discover blackness and unintelligble voices beyond it. Katie appears. Enslin does not believe it is really Katie, and she begins to cry. Overcome, Enslin takes Katie into his arms, and weeps, insisting that t
hey can be together forever. Katie goes limp in his arms, then turns to dust. In a rage, Enslin begins to smash the contents of the room as the clock once again plays "We've Only Just Begun", and then collapses as the countdown gets to zero. Enslin finds himself back in the room as it was at the beginning of the hour. The phone rings, and Enslin answers, asking, "Why don't you just kill me?" The voice on the other end informs him that he has free will, and has the choice of either reliving the hour over and over again, or to commit suicide to escape. Nooses appear hanging from the ceiling in each room in the suite. The phone rings again, and the operator informs Enslin that Lily will be arriving in five minutes. Enslin tells the operator that he's going to end it all, but not their way.
He hangs up on the phone, and makes a Molotov cocktail, deciding to sacrifice himself for the sake of saving other people from the room. He sets the room alight, and curls up under the coffee table as it burns, laughing hysterically. Firefighters come rushing in, and save him.
He awakens in a hospital in New York, with Lily by his side, this time for real. He recovers, and moves back in wit
h her, and writing the book that he had dreamed he'd written before. He tells Lily about his experiences in the room, but she dismisses them as fantasy. One afternoon, soon after moving, Lily finds a box of his belongings salvaged from the Dolphin Hotel, including his cassette recorder. He takes it out and presses play, hearing some of his original narrative about the room, and then, to Lily's shock, their daughter's voice, talking to Enslin. She stares at Enslin, agog. He smiles back slightly.
After narrowly escaping injury whilst going surfing, Enslin receives a postcard in the mail, picturing the Dolphin Hotel in New York. It is not signed, but says on the back, "Don't Enter 1408." Doing some research, he discovers that anyone and everyone who has ever stayed in the hotel room in question has mysteriously committed suicide whilst in it. Curious, he calls the Dolphin, and attempts to book the room, but the hotel refuses him, insisting that it is permanently "unavailable". After getting the lawyer at his literary agency involved, the Dolphin is forced to rent the room to Enslin. Upon his arrival at the hotel, he is pulled into a private meeting with the hotel's manager, Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), who does his best to convince Enslin not to stay in 1408, going so far as to offer him bribes, warning him that in 1408, "No one's ever lasted more than an hour", and that in addition to the suicides a number of the people who have stayed in the room have died inexplicable natural deaths. Enslin remains firm about staying in 1408, and Olin reluctantly escorts him to the room.
Once inside, Enslin pulls out his cassette recorder, and comments
on how there initially appears to be nothing out-of-the-ordinary about the room. As he leans out the window to record his thoughts on the view of the city, the clock radio on the night table suddenly starts blaring "We've Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters. Bumping his head on the windowpane, he turns to discover that chocolates have appeared on his pillow. Thinking that it is a trick being played on him by Olin, he searches the room, but finds no one. He then finds that the air-conditioning is broken, stuck near 80°F. He calls up an engineer to fix it. Meanwhile he uses a fluorescent light to observe where blood-stains have been washed off in the room; he notices that a painting on the wall has became tilted and sets it straight. The engineer then arrives. He refuses to enter the room out of fear and instead instructs Mike on how to fix it himself from the doorway. Enslin fixes it and thanks the engineer, only to find he has disappeared down the hall.Sitting on the bed, the clock radio suddenly blares "We've Only Just Begun" again, before the numbers scramble, and begin a countdown from 60:00. Enslin is scared, remembering Olin's warning that no one has ever survived more than an hour in the room, but is distracted by realizing that he is suddenly deaf, only hearing a whirring buzz inside his head. He leans out the window again and regains his hearing, only to have the window slam down on his hand, hurting it badly. He goes into the bathroom to wash it, only for the tap to suddenly spray his hand with boiling hot water. He tries to plug it with towels, before smashing it by kicking it. He goes into the bedroom again and the clock once again starts blaring "We've Only Just Begun". Enslin rips it out of the wall, but whilst the music stops, the countdown doesn't. He then receives a call from room service regarding a meal that he has not asked for, and he shouts at the receptionist that he is injured, about to check out, and that she needs to call him an ambulance, but the phone only talks randomly about various hotel services. The phone call disconnects, and Enslin hangs up, quickly gathers his things, and races for the door. When he tries to unlock the door with the room key, the key breaks off in the lock. He picks the lock with a knife, only to have the doorknob fall off when he grasps it. He pounds on the door to try to break it down, or alert someone outside, but nothing works. He is trapped in 1408.
Trying to signal he needs help to someone outside through the window, he sees a man in a room in a building directly across from him. Attempting to request help from him, he then realizes t
hat the man is a doppelganger of himself, imitating whatever movements he makes. Suddenly, an image of a killer wielding an ice pick, one of the room's former inhabitants, approaches the doppelganger from behind and murders it. Enslin looks to his right to discover the killer there; slashing at him. He backs away frantically, only for the killer to suddenly disappear. He attempts to signal help again by dropping a lamp out of the window, but it disappears upon hitting the ground. He then hears a young girl's voice calling for her "daddy", it is revealed later to be that of his daughter. His thoughts become disordered and paranoid, and he briefly suspects that Olin put drugs in the alcohol he served him during their meeting and that he is hallucinating.The TV then turns on by itself and shows Enslin playing with his now estranged wife, Lily, and aforementioned daughter, Katie. Distraught, he places his hand against the screen against his daughter's face, only for it to turn off. He then sees apparitions of the room's former occupants looking at him, solemnly, before jumping out of the window. Then he hears noises coming from the bathroom, and goes in to find it is a completely different bathroom and his father (with whom it is suggested he has a strained relationship) sitting in a wheelchair muttering to himself. He attempts to talk to him, and he claims that "As you were... I was. As I am... you will be." before the room returns to normal, albeit with blood now running out of the sink. Enslin ponders as to whether it is all a dream. He then notices that cracks have appeared in one of the walls and are leaking black fluid.
Enslin then has an idea to escape the room by climbing along the ledge outside the window to the opposite room. When he tries, however, all the other windows disappear, and he is forced to go back. Another apparition of a former room occupant leers out the window and startles him, almost causing him to fall, before leaping out and disappearing. He manages to pull himself back i
n just as the windowpane slams shut. He looks at the floorplan of the hotel on the door to discover that it has changed and marks 1408 as the only room in the hotel, right in the middle of the structure. The lights then flicker on and off, and he looks to the windows to discover they have been bricked up, with one of the bricks having the words "BURN ME ALIVE" written on it. He hears a noise coming from another room in the suite, and goes to see a vision of himself and Lily arguing about Katie, of whom it is revealed that a few years ago prior to the movie contracted cancer and died at the age of ten. The lights then flicker to red and he hears Katie calling him for help, before they return to normal. Suddenly the ice pick-wielding killer from earlier appears in the mirror and Enslin whips around, only to find no one there. He then discovers that the temperature in the room has dropped down to around 40°F.Enslin attempts to call for help on his mobile phone but there is no signal. He then tries his laptop, and manages to get ahold of Lily via video chat. They have not seen each other in a year, and she immediately begins venting at him for leaving her without a word, while he tries to explain his situation to her, and get her to call the police. The room's fire-sprinkler system then activates on its own, and shorts out his laptop, leaving him trapped once again.
He then attempts to escape through the air-conditioning ducts. Looking down through the grates which should lead into the adjacent rooms, he only sees Lily with an infant Katie, and he and his father arguing in a park about his writing. He then discovers a corpse lying in the ducts, and realizes it is another of the room's former occupants, Kevin O'Malley. The corpse then comes alive and chases him; Enslin kicks its face and it disintegrates. He then crawls back into the room, his escape-attempt again thwarted.
Enslin looks in the refrigerator for a drink, only to see a vision of Olin in his office, taunting him. Enslin demands to know what he wants, but Olin persists in asking Enslin what he wants
, and questions the morality of his writings given the false-hope they give to fans. Enslin flies into a rage and attempts to attack Olin but the refrigerator returns to normal. Enslin then looks in the bible from his bedside table to find the pages have gone blank. He then sees another vision of himself and Lily with Katie in hospital in the past, in which Katie asked him if heaven and God were real; and he told her that they are, though he himself actually wasn't/isn't sure. Afterwards he and Lily fought about whether telling her such things was the right thing to do as opposed to egging her on to fight the cancer, and broke up. The fax machine then rings, and Enslin receives through it a dress of Katie's.The room's temperature drops to below zero and freezes over. Enslin, having now all but lost his sanity, curls up in the comforter from the bed with a fire burning, and begins to mumble disjointed nonsense into his recorder. His laptop suddenly reactivates, and he hears Lily calling to him from the chat program. She tells him that she sent the police to the hotel, but they have told her that 1408 is empty. She says that she will come to the hotel to help him herself instead. Enslin insists that she stay put, knowing that if she enters the room she will wind up in the same ordeal he is undergoing, but a picture of himself showing what Lily is seeing and hearing appears on the screen and it tells Lily to please come to the hotel and come directly to 1408. It then grins and winks triumphantly at the real Enslin, and the conversation ends. An earthquake then occurs and the room starts destroying itself, with the walls and ceilings cracking and the floor rupturing. A storm starts pouring into the room, and the formerly banal paintings on the walls change into horrific versions. A painting with a ship sailing in calm waters turns into one of the ship in a storm with the ice-pick wielding killer on the deck; Enslin strikes the painting and the wall collapses and water pours into the room. Enslin finds himself drowning and being tossed by waves, before finding himself washed up on a beach.
Apparently, the entire experience in room 1408 was just a dream he suffered after nearly getting injurred whilst surfing, back at the start of the film. He awakes in hospital with Lily by his side. Enslin and Lily reconcile and begin to rebuild their relationship, and he finds his passion for writing renewed. He also goes to a nursing home and reconciles with his father. After repeating the research he did at the start of the film, he discovers that the Dolphin Hotel does not actually even exist. Everything seems happy. However, when he goes to the post office to mail his latest manuscript to his agent, he discovers the post office is staffed entirely by people that he remembers from the hotel. They begin tearing down the post office, revealing 1408 to be underneath it. Apparently the entire experience was not a dream after all.
The room appears to have been ravaged by a fire. He goes to a cupboard and sees a vision of Katie's coffin burning in a crematorium. A door appears behind him; he opens it only to discover blackness and unintelligble voices beyond it. Katie appears. Enslin does not believe it is really Katie, and she begins to cry. Overcome, Enslin takes Katie into his arms, and weeps, insisting that t
hey can be together forever. Katie goes limp in his arms, then turns to dust. In a rage, Enslin begins to smash the contents of the room as the clock once again plays "We've Only Just Begun", and then collapses as the countdown gets to zero. Enslin finds himself back in the room as it was at the beginning of the hour. The phone rings, and Enslin answers, asking, "Why don't you just kill me?" The voice on the other end informs him that he has free will, and has the choice of either reliving the hour over and over again, or to commit suicide to escape. Nooses appear hanging from the ceiling in each room in the suite. The phone rings again, and the operator informs Enslin that Lily will be arriving in five minutes. Enslin tells the operator that he's going to end it all, but not their way.He hangs up on the phone, and makes a Molotov cocktail, deciding to sacrifice himself for the sake of saving other people from the room. He sets the room alight, and curls up under the coffee table as it burns, laughing hysterically. Firefighters come rushing in, and save him.
He awakens in a hospital in New York, with Lily by his side, this time for real. He recovers, and moves back in wit
h her, and writing the book that he had dreamed he'd written before. He tells Lily about his experiences in the room, but she dismisses them as fantasy. One afternoon, soon after moving, Lily finds a box of his belongings salvaged from the Dolphin Hotel, including his cassette recorder. He takes it out and presses play, hearing some of his original narrative about the room, and then, to Lily's shock, their daughter's voice, talking to Enslin. She stares at Enslin, agog. He smiles back slightly.