After watching the movie I decided to read the story and I found some key differences that made me like the story better.
The most entertaining thing about reading stories is that you get to feel the emotions that the characters are feeling. When they're scared you become scared. When they're sad you become sad, and while reading 1408 every time Mike became scared or sad I became scared or sad. While I was watching the movie I felt nothing because the actor that played Mike Enslin was boring and didn't do a very good job at playing Mike. I like being able to feel something when I watch movies and I felt absolutely nothing when I was watching 1408. The Character development was horrible and non existent.
When watching a movie you usually expect some form of character development but in 1408 there was none. Mike Enslin started off the movie bland and he ended the movie bland. Unlink the story, where Mike started off confident and cocky but ended sad and depressed. Weird things started happening while in 1408. The alarm clock started going haywire and Mike's dead daughter appeared and told him how much she loved him. When this part of the story happened in the movie Mike was emotionless and could care less that he could see and hear his daughter; but in the story I could feel exactly what he was feeling.
I feel that when I read a story I can relate to the characters more then if I am watching a movie. While reading 1408 I felt like I could relate more to Mike, unlike when I was watching the movie, because in the story Mike was a cocky, and confident individual, like me, who knew what he wanted to do with his life. In the movie he was an arrogant, stuck up individual, unlike me, and all he wanted to do was get into 1408 and stay there to prove to everybody that it wasn't haunted. That's what I liked least about the movie. The story was much better and more entertaining.
Most stories and books are way better then the movies that are made from the books or stories. 1408 is a good example of this. I believe that if the casting director of 1408 got better people to play the main characters in the movie, the movie would be more entertaining; but because the actors and actresses were so bland the movie was horrible and pointless. The story was much better and the key examples I gave were what made the story more entertaining.
