Manhattan housing being as costly as it is, and with almost no single-occupancy buildings still standing, it is no longer feasible to set a haunted house movie in New York. The result is such scaled-down products as haunted apartment movies (Dark Water) and haunted hotel room movies (1408). This may be a sign that real estate prices have got so out of line that not even poltergeists and vampires can afford to terrorise the city, and may eventually be forced to wreak havoc in Baltimore or Cedar Rapids.

In addition to being a daunting symbol of a housing market gone mad, 1408 is an example of another expanding genre: the horror movie that makes no sense. Traditionally, moviegoers do not care how much stomach-turning mayhem occurs in the course of a motion picture, so long as they receive some explanation for the lunacy and bloodshed by the time they leave the theatre. Thus, Frankenstein behaves uncivilly because he is mistreated by peasants, Dracula requires a steady supply of fresh blood in order to survive, Michael Corleone crosses over to the dark side in response to his bride's murder, and Norman Bates suffers from a mommy complex exacerbated by a sudden downturn in the regional hospitality industry.

In Paradise Lost (Turistas), organ-plundering physicians in poverty-stricken nations prey on spoiled American kids in a cultural vendetta: you took our oil, we're taking your kidneys. Conversely, in 1408, as in last year's arty thriller Cache, as in The Hitcher - a dire Sean Bean vehicle that came out earlier this year - viewers leave the theatre without the slightest idea why things have taken such a bad turn. Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche never find out why somebody has been leaving weird surveillance tapes of their comings and goings in their mailbox. Sean Bean never reveals why he feels compelled to butcher every New Mexican State trooper from Santa Fe to Gallup. And at no point does anyone make any effort whatsoever to explain why the hotel room John Cusack checks into at the beginning of 1408 seems determined to kill him.

Derived from a Stephen King short story, 1408 is basically The Shining for business travellers. Apprised by an anonymous source that room 1408 (at what appears to be the Waldorf Hotel) is the scariest piece of real estate in the country, Cusack, a hack travel writer who specialises in cranking out books about haunted houses, flies to New York, checks into the room, and then tries to survive a night in which everyone from the Ghost Of Christmas Past to his dead daughter turn up to scare the bejesus out of him. Before doing so, he is warned by hotel manager Samuel L Jackson that everyone who has ever checked into Room 1408 has died, a chain of tragedies dating all the way back to the 1920s. But Cusack insists, so Jackson forks over the key, and now the room starts going to town on him.

This is where things get really annoying. Any New York hotel room worth its salt can kill off a traveller if it sets its mind to it: if the faulty wiring doesn't get you, the rivers of blood that routinely cascade from the walls of hotel rooms will. But this is only scary if there is some reason the room has decided to act this way. If something unforgivable happened in room 1408 and this is what turned it into a man-eating hotel room, well, that makes for an interesting story. But if the room is perpetrating all this violence gratuitously, why should anyone care? Room 1408 is merely a rogue hotel room, a loner, a solitary whack job. Mankind need fear nothing from room 1408, because room 1408 minds its own business except when some wise-ass scribe decides to check into it. As long as guests stay out of room 1408, there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Maybe not even that.

Is it possible that room 1408 turned murderous for reasons I may have overlooked? Yes. One plausible theory is that room 1408 wants to kill John Cusack because it is furious that Samuel L Jackson didn't check into the room instead. Cusack, whose wise-cracking slacker persona is starting to wear thin, is surely a likable fellow, but he's not much of an opponent for a room as ornery as 1408; Cusack versus room 1408 is Germany versus Poland all over again. Jackson, by contrast, would have given room 1408 a run for its money, and even with all the weird apparitions and rivers of blood and inexplicable explosions and dead tykes, it's by no means certain that room 1408 would have come out on top. Room 1408 might be scary. But Samuel L Jackson is mean. Personally, I believe that, provided he had enough time to train for the tilt, Samuel L Jackson would have kicked room 1408's ass.

Let's face it: hotel rooms simply aren't that scary. Because of this, 1408 is not all that much more frightening than a movie called Vengeful Laundry Room or Deadly Pantry. Only one thing could have made 1408 work for me: If John Cusack woke up in the middle of the night and discovered that Samuel L Jackson and a bunch of snakes were in the room. That I'd pay to see.

· 1408 is out on Friday