Bovie Movie

A huge comet is on a collision course with Earth in director Mimi Leder’s science-fiction disaster movie, which gains a certain amount of credibility by highlighting the human side of the impending catastrophe. The frightening scenario focuses on TV reporter Téa Leoni, who stumbles upon the story while tracking down what she thinks is a Presidential indiscretion, and astronaut Robert Duvall, who leads a mission to intercept the threat in space. The chilling gravity of the situation is hauntingly evoked by the national lottery that’s put in place to choose who will “survive” in an underground retreat. Leder adds gripping immediacy to executive producer Steven Spielberg’s loose remake of Rudolph Maté’s 1951 movie When Worlds Collide and caps it all with a spectacular display of epic destruction. 

Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom bucks the current trend for gratuitous splatter horror with this simple but effective psychological chiller. Based on a Stephen King short story, it’s an old-school creep-out, in which mounting dread and twisted mind games remind us that scares don’t have to come drenched with gore. In a powerfully nuanced performance, John Cusack plays a paranormal debunker who checks into the allegedly haunted suite 1408 as part of his research for a new book. Although the hotel’s manager (Samuel L Jackson) warns him of his folly, the sceptical writer is determined to disprove the ghostly rumours. For the first two thirds of its running time the film is a master class in slow-drip fear, exploiting every sound and visual for maximum effect and making innocuous domestic objects surprisingly terrifying. It’s only when Hafstrom goes CGI crazy in the final act that the film unravels, diluting its impact with a series of overblown set pieces. 

There are more laughs than you might expect in this light-hearted vehicle for the normally dire David Spade. He plays Dickie Roberts, the washed-up former child star who, having missed his real-life childhood, is unable to generate the emotion necessary to clinch a possible movie comeback. To solve the problem, he moves in with an all-American family who, with grim Hollywood inevitability, at first resent his presence then warm to his oddball personality. The screenplay degenerates into schmaltz occasionally — and there’s a pseudo-Oedipal strand to the story that will strike some as subversive and others as plain weird — but Spade creates an unusual character who, despite being self-obsessed, is oddly vulnerable and likeable. If none of that appeals, you can always spend your time spotting the numerous cameo appearances by genuine former child stars (the end credits feature a fantastically gruesome massed choir of them).