Summary

• In the movie 1408, there are four alternate endings that bring unique spins to Mike Enslin's storyline, including his survival, reunion with his daughter, and his tragic demise.
• The movie explores the nine circles of hell through Mike's experiences in room 1408, reflecting his sins and ultimately leading him to seek redemption and live selflessly.
• Mike's skepticism and loss of faith after his daughter's death made him vulnerable to the room's influence, but by the end of the movie, his faith is restored and he quits writing horror.

1408 has four alternate endings, all of which bring a unique spin to Mike Enslin's storyline — here's a breakdown of all four endings and what they mean for Mike. Based on a Stephen King short story, 1408 focuses on horror author Mike Enslin, who visits haunted places, hoping to capture the paranormal and write a book about them. To his dismay, none of the so-called haunted rentals give him concrete proof of the existence of the supernatural. However, one day, Mike receives a postcard that warns him not to visit The Dolphin's room no. 1408.

Out of sheer curiosity, Mike decides to visit the hotel and is surprised that the hotel's manager, Gerald Olin, tries to convince him to stay out of the room. Mike refuses to comply with the hotel manager's requests and even threatens to press legal charges to acquire the room's key. Everything initially seems fine after he enters the room, but the longer he stays there, the more he finds himself living in a loop of literal and metaphorical hell.

1408's Alternate Endings Explained

In 1408's theatrical ending, Mike burns the room down and survives after a group of firefighters gets him out of there. With what follows, Mike even fixes his relationship with his wife and reconciles with her. As Mike goes through his possessions retrieved from the burnt-down room, he finds his mini-cassette recorder, which he used for reciting his experience. To his surprise, he hears Katie's voice on the recorder, confirming that everything he experienced in the room is real. His wife, too, hears the recording and starts believing everything he claims to have experienced in the room.

In an alternate version of a similar ending, only Mike reacts to hearing his daughter's voice on the recorder, while his wife does not acknowledge it. The ending in 1408's director's cut is significantly different from the one that made it to the theaters. According to reports, director Mikael Håfström changed the movie's ending before releasing it in theaters because the test audiences were not satisfied with it. In this ending, Mike dies in the fire in the room before firefighters can rescue him. In the closing scene, Olin tries to give the box of Mike's possessions to Lily after Mike's funeral, but she refuses to take it.

Moments later, when Olin scuffles through Mike's belongings, he finds the tape recorder and hears Katie's voice on it. This is when he notices a girl walking on the grass in the cemetery before Mike's burnt apparition appears in the car's backseat. With what follows, Mike grabs the little girl's hand and walks away, hinting that he reunited with his daughter after death. In the closing scene, Mike looks around the room while smoking a cigarette. When his daughter calls out for him, he disappears behind the front door, suggesting he successfully defeated the room.

The fourth ending is more somber than all the others. Mike dies from the fire in this one, and his ghost is never seen again. After meeting Lily, his publisher, Sam, reads the story from Mike's manuscript that describes his experience in the room. In this ending's closing scene, the film replays a quote from a previous scene where Mike's father appears in the room and warns him: "As you are, I was. As I am, you will be." This ending highlights that despite his best efforts to change, Mike followed in his father's footsteps and never turned his life around, which likely kept him trapped in room 1408 forever like other troubled souls.

The Circles Of Hell In 1408 Explained

Even though it looks like Mike experiences a random set of terrors during his stay in 1408, several visual cues and story beats in the movie suggest that he is experiencing the nine circles of hell. Mike's backstory reveals after tragically losing his daughter to cancer, he struggled to hold on to his faith in god. Several flashbacks depict how his relationship with his wife deteriorated after his daughter's death because he hated how his wife told her stories about heaven instead of encouraging her to fight her disease. These conflicts with his wife ultimately led to him moving away from her.

In an early scene in the movie, Mike nearly drowns to death while surfing before a surfer saves him. Although 1408 portrays that Mike merely had a brush with doom, Mike actually died, marking his foray into the first circle of hell: limbo. Subsequently, Mike ends up in The Dolphin Hotel and checks himself into room 1408, where he descends deeper into hell. Every time the clock resets and the Carpenters' song "We've Only Just Begun" starts playing, Mike experiences the punishments from a new circle in the inferno. Each new circle reflects a sin he committed after his daughter's death.

From being condemned to lie in vile slush for his gluttonous alcoholism to experiencing extreme temperatures in the room for his rejection of faith, Mike faces it all during his stay in 1408. After his journey through Hell, Mike, like Dante, ascends to Mount Purgatory, where he finally seeks redemption. Following his cathartic journey through hell, Mike becomes a changed man and, for once, starts living selflessly.

Although the room incessantly coerces him into ending his own life, Mike resists the urge to take another selfish decision and, instead, sets the room on fire to prevent it from luring his wife. With this, Mike successfully redeems himself and, in the theatrical ending, finds himself in a metaphorical heaven on Earth. In the closing scene, his daughter's voice in the recorder becomes a reminder for him to hold on to his newfound faith.

How Many People Died In 1408

Before visiting the central hotel, Mike researches the room's history and calculates the total number of people who might have died in The Dolhin's 1408. However, once he arrives at the hotel, hotel manager Olin reveals that the number is far higher than he thinks. He tells him that in the past 95 years, 56 people have died in room 1408. Since many deaths in the room were from natural causes, they remained unreported by mainstream media outlets.

1408's Ending Explains Why Mike Writes Horror

1408's redemptive ending explains that Mike became a horror writer because, after his daughter's death, he could not help but dismiss the existence of god. His sense of faith crumbled, which made him adopt a nihilistic perspective toward the world around him. After leaving his wife, who taught their daughter to be faithful before her death, Mike made it his life's mission to prove that god does not exist. His skepticism ultimately made him a vulnerable target for room 1408. Towards the end of 1408, Mike decides to quit writing altogether because his faith is restored, and he has no reason to denounce the supernatural or god.

How Is 1408 Different From The Original Stephen King Story

Compared to the Stephen King short story, 1408's narrative is more nuanced in the sense that it ties everything from Mike's past traumas to his passion for writing with the room. The Stephen King short story, on the other hand, solely relies on instilling the fear of the unknown in a reader by describing the strange projections and apparitions the room presents to Mike. Even the short story's ending is significantly different from the movie's theatrical conclusion. While Mike gets out of the room as a changed man in the 1408 movie's ending and later hears his dead daughter's voice on the recorder, his agent hears weird noises on the same tape in the original short story's closing scene.