Review #162: 'The Ward' (2010)

John Carpenter's directing career has been very dubious since 1982's The Thing. He made some silly-but-entertaining films in the 1980's, - Christine (1983), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) - some of which had interesting ideas at their core - Prince of Darkness (1987), They Live (1988). In the 1990's, Carpenter made an awful remake of the classic Village of the Damned (1995); a shoddy sequel, Escape from LA (1996); a "Western-Horror", Vampires (1998) - amongst some other dire fare; and in 2001, Carpenter made his last film, the unforgivable Ghosts of Mars. Forward almost a decade later, and Carpenter releases The Ward, which promised a return to form.

Set in 1966, the film opens with Kristen (Amber Heard), somnambulist-like, committing an act of arson on a farm house. She is captured and incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital where she meets four other institutionalised young women, each with a different distinctive neuroses: Emily (Mamie Gummer), Sarah (Danielle Pannabaker), Zooey (Laura-Leigh) and Iris (Lyndsey Fonseca). Kristen soon discovers that there is a ghost terrorising the girls, slowly killing them off one by one. Kristen discovers that the spirit is that of a former inmate who mysteriously disappeared, and she persists in attempting to escape the fortress of the hospital.

If nothing else in the past nine years since his last film, Carpenter has certainly seen a lot of 21st century horror films, and absorbed some of the elements that have worked. The Ward also looks quite similar to another directors first horror film for years, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell (2009). It doesn't have Raimi's humour, or moments of cinematographic frenzy, but does have some great tracking shots through wonderfully lit corridors, and a few self-reflexive shots; the Carpenterian static shots of empty areas, atmospheric montage sequences whilst approaching the horror to come. The ghost of the story is both zombie-like (in an over-elaborate Tom Savini kind of way), but also has similarities to Ringu's (1998) lank-haired Sadako. The film is, however consistently let down by just too many oh-so-cliched "red herring", jump-out-of-your-seat moments, that are largely ineffective, as the audience are knowledgeable enough to anticipate them moments before the event.

Whilst The Ward does not reflect a film maker who is back on his top form (he will never come close to his early films - Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape From New York (1981)), it is at times a suspenseful film. The film even has a "twist" ending (also by now beginning to tire as a narrative necessity), with tones of Scorsese's Shutter Island (2009). I would have to say that this falls within Carpenter's second period of filmaking from Christine to They Live.


Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Amber Heard, Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy