The makers of the haunted-hotel thriller 1408 know that mutilated corpses and phantom assailants are pretty disturbing. They're also shrewd enough to realize that sometimes there's nothing scarier than the voice of a hotel concierge-from-hell, chattering on the phone with perky banality. Or the Carpenters singing "We've Only Just Begun." Again and again and again on a clock radio.

Based on a Stephen King story, 1408 takes the simplest plot and turns it into an enjoyably surreal, unnerving creepfest. John Cusack plays Mike Enslin, a once-promising novelist who now makes a living knocking out a series of "10 Haunted" books (mansions, cemeteries, etc.). Problem is, he's never encountered any actual supernatural activity in his research, though he perpetuates (and profits from) the boo factor.

So why do so many inns claim to be aswarm with phantoms? "They're awfully convenient for desperate hotels when the interstate moves away," Mike says.

The latest hotel on his to-do list couldn't be less remote: It's the Dolphin in midtown Manhattan. And its manager (Samuel L. Jackson, in a small but pungent role) doesn't want his establishment to be included in Mike's next book. In fact, he seems dead set on keeping the writer from stepping into Room (you got it) 1408. He's been steering guests away from it for 11 years, citing some 56 deaths there since the hotel opened in 1912.