Review of The Ward (2010) by Philip P — 21 Aug 2011

It has been a long time since John Carpenter has released a film. Too bad that break hasn't seemed to help the overall affect his films might have on your nightmares. "The Ward" is essentially a less stylized version of that other flop this year called "Sucker Punch".

Though I did enjoy "Sucker Punch" more and more after repeat viewings I doubt I would say the same about "The Ward." For one, it stars a group of young girls that are by no means not talented but who have mostly starred in films alongside much bigger names and have no doubt improved their own performances.

Here, with no one to lean on, Amber Heard, Danielle Panabaker, and Lyndsy Fonseca feel amateur and give us no motivation to try and crawl through this hour and a half non-scare fest. The story is simple enough: For unbeknown reasons to us, Heard's Kristin is placed in a crazy house after burning down a house.

There she is put in a special "ward" where she is accompanied by a few other young ladies. Each of them possess a very distinct personality, but these stock differences are never explored and even with Jared Harris playing the psychologist in charge we are never given any reason to create any mystery around these characters.

We soon discover there is a dark past with Kristin's new friends and a girl that was institutionalized with them previously. What this leads to is basically a bunch of missed opportunity. I wanted to enjoy the film, at least get a kick out of the 60's time frame but all that setting does is provide the characters with creative and more cruel ways of dying (oops, did I spoil something there? be for real).

This is a re-hash of every film it seems Carpenter has watched in his nine year absence, but that doesn't culminate in a comeback worth talking about. The twist ending was better than expected, but nothing that would make-up for all that came before it.