John, what was this?
The Ward (2010)
Directed By: John Carpenter (The Thing)
The Prologue
2001 was the last time we got a full length film from John Carpenter. But now in 2011 we finally get another one, The Ward. One has to wonder going into watch this if we’d see shades of the Carpenter of old, or if he had gone the way of other legendary directors and shown signs of falling off his perch and being slightly out of touch with the current horror audience. Sadly, I think the majority of people who watched his recent film might be more inclined to agree with the out of touch side of things. But at least we get Amber Heard. I’m not even sure if you’d call her acting that great overall, but she’s at least easy on the eyes.
The Movie
Acclaimed director John Carpenter makes his long awaited return to the screen with a thriller about a young woman in a 1960s mental institution who becomes terrorized by malevolent unseen forces. Kristen, a beautiful but troubled young woman, finds herself bruised, cut, drugged with laughing gas. The other patients in the ward four equally disturbed young women offer no answers, and Kristen quickly realizes things are not as they seem. The air is heavy with secrets, and at night, when the hospital is dark and foreboding, she hears strange and frightening sounds. It appears they are not alone. One-by-one, the other girls begin to disappear and Kristen must find a way out of this hellish place before she, too, becomes a victim. As she struggles to escape, she will uncover a truth far more dangerous and horrifying than anyone could have imagined.
Well, The Ward does go out of it’s way to set up a nice little mystery story from the get-go. It would have been a lot nicer however, if we hadn’t already seen this plot before in more than one horror film. There’s an OK atmosphere, the characters aren’t boring, and it does a fine job of making things look a little off and unsettling. It just never really delivers that knockout punch to the viewer after it sets you up with some nice jabs. It instead just gives a straight shot you expected and leaves the surprise right cross out of the situation all together. Sorry for all the boxing metaphors here, but after seeing this I feel as if I’ve been hit in the head a few times myself. It’s never fun when things go the exact way you expect them to go from the start.
You may remember when John Carpenter movies set you up with some frightening cinematography. We’d set on the edge of our seats as a man in a mask calmly walked after some babysitters, or as the fog would roll in. Besides a bunch of jump scares and a ghost, we don’t get much here outside of a few crazy women dancing around to old tunes, in what had to be one of the more random scenes I’ve seen in a horror film as of late. Still, taking that into account, things could have ended on a much better note had the film just not traced other horror films that came before it with the same plot and ending. And I never did think I’d see the day that John Carpenter would be lacking originality. Well, on second thought, if you truly believe the old Bob Clark story, then maybe you can actually believe it.
But at least the acting isn’t bad, right? Amber Heard, Jared Harris, Danielle Panabaker ect. They all do a fine job of working with what they have here to work with. And I believe it would be fair to just credit them for the few and far in between bright spots of the film. It also at least looks a little spooky at times, but in the year 2011 I think some more blood wouldn’t have hurt anything either. If you do manage to find this film likeable at first, I am more than sure the ending will let you down in it’s silliness, predictability, and the whole “been there and done that” vibe it presents.
The Conclusion
As hard as it might be to believe, the same guy that gave us Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, and countless other horror classics gave us, The Ward. This is just entirely a skip-able film that I think most fans of Carpenter would like to now try to forget was ever made. I hate to do it, but it seems we may need to toss John in the same group of directors as George Romero and Dario Argento, for directors who seem to have lost “it”.
The Rating (5.5/10)
