In the movie 1408 with john cusack did he end up dying?

Answer 1

In the theatrical version, Cusack's character (Mike Enslin) lives, but in the director's cut, he dies. The theatrical version ends with Enslin moving back in with his wife, who finds his fire-damaged tape recorder in one of the boxes she's unpacking. Miraculously, it still works, and she plays it back and hears their dead daughter Katie's voice on the tape, thereby proving to both of them that all the stuff that went on in the room was real.

In the director's cut, Enslin dies in the fire, and Sam Jackson's character shows up at the funeral at the cemetery and tries to give Enslin's wife a box of his things that were found in the room, including the fire-damaged tape recorder. She refuses to take it, so he leaves with the box and gets into his car. When he looks in the rear-view mirror, Enslin's horribly burned spectre appears briefly for one more scare. Then right before the credits roll there is one last exterior shot of the room, showing Enslin's ghost hanging out in there.

Everybody always tells me I'm crazy, but I always thought that Enslin's character dies in both the director's cut and the theatrical version. At the very end of the theatrical version, when their dead daughter's voice is playing, Enslin's wife looks at him, utterly horrified and astonished, and he just looks back at her and gives her this creepy kind of half-smile. I always thought that the creepy half-smile signified that Enslin had actually died, and his spirit was trapped in the room, and the guy sitting there with Enslin's wife isn't actually Enslin, but some kind of demon imposter, or evil doppelganger, or whatever. That the evil force managed to escape the room, taking the form of Enslin, while the real Enslin was still trapped inside.

None of my friends agree with this interpretation, but when I was watching the director's cut with commentary, one of the guys said, "Well, the reason I like the director's cut is that there are a few different interpretations of it," and then the other guy said something like, "Well, there's different interpretations of the theatrical cut, too." So maybe I'm right after all.