Review of The Ward (2010) by Rowena C — 24 May 2011

John Carpenter was once one of the greatest and most influentional horror movie directors working in cinema. With classics such as Halloween, which reinvented the slasher genre, The Thing, which possibly created one the greatest monsters in the genre and Assault on Precinct 13 which is also a classic. Ever since 1982 John Carpenter has never been able to hit the heights that he did when he was at the top of his game. John Carpenter's The Ward is not a return to form from director who is now best known as 'that bloke who made Halloween.'.

After being caught burning a house that is the location of the memories that Kristen (Amber Heard) is trying to repress (the memories that she is trying to repress becomes relevant later on in the film) she is taken to an asylum. However, the ward that Kristen and four other girls have to stay is haunted by a ghost intent on killing the residents of the ward.

The Ward is John Carpenters first film for 10 years, his last production was the dull Ghosts of Mars, The Ward maybe a better film than Ghosts of Mars but it is hardly a return to his greatest days in the 70s and 80s. The Ward suffers from many problems, including an unoriginal twist ending, cheap scares and a lack of suspense in the latter parts of the film. While The Ward started off perfectly well, there is an ominous feel to the North Bend Psychiatric hospital within the opening scenes and the in the Ward itself and the hospital does indeed look foreboding in the dark. However a creepy atmosphere is blown away due to the over reliance on cheap scares, loud sound effects and BOO moments, there is plenty to make you jump but it takes no skill when the jumps are only due to the sudden explosions in loud sounds effects (namely thunderclaps). The scares themselves are not particularly scary, they are nothing more than a glance out the window, a glance away from the window and then a second glance towards the window and then BOO!!! You almost feel ashamed of yourself that you even reacted to these fake, worthless scares. The scares make you jump like you would when a pigeon flies straight into a window, or if somebody bangs something hard on the table, hardly scary.

The Ward is perhaps most disappointing to John Carpenter fans, it's a colossal disappoint as Carpenter does not even come moderately class to repeating the achievements he made in the 70s and 80s. The suspense achieved in Halloween and The Thing is not repeated in The Ward and it's a shame that Carpenter has sunk to the levels of cheap and dull scares. If one did not know that the director behind Halloween was the same director behind The Ward they would never believe that it is the same man because it isn't, John Carpenter is just not the same as he was before, he is a shadow of his former self. The score itself, which is intended as an eerily sounding humming, adds very little to atmosphere, The Ward just is not creepy, scary or engaging enough to really be considered a good horror flick, while it does have its moments and it is far greater than the other tosh that we have seen populate cinemas recently. Horror movies have proved that the atmosphere creates the scares, at the half way point the atmosphere is nonexistent and in the end John Carpenters' The Ward is just ever so slightly boring despite the event filled finale but none of these events spark any real and significant interest.

The Ward does contain some efficient, yet not remarkable, performances from the likes Amber Heard and Jared Harris the obviously, due to his very noticeable English accent, English and sinister physiatrist, taking the whole film into account there is not one single bad performance. However there is a strong waft of unoriginality stenching (is this a word?) the whole place up. The creepy girl is taken from any horror that involves a creepy girl; the scares have been used thousands of times in other horror movies the whole plot and twist ending itself is almost a carbon copy of another very similar film (I of course can go further into the matter). The only really shocking thing about the twist ending is that someone with the reputation that John Carpenter has in the horror genre would include something that banal, obvious and uninteresting. My main huge grievance with The Ward is the very thing I can't talk about as it is a major and important part of the story, it just evokes sighs and a feeling of 'Come on, John, you know better than this.' The ending is total disaster. Without the twist ending The Ward may have fared better for me personally but its complete catastrophic failure that, almost single handily, ruins The Wards credibility. Much more than this the repressed memory that Kristen is hiding has been ridiculously over used in the horror genre to the point of trivialising it. The bitchy girls get annoying very quickly and there is one quite gruesome scene which is not enjoyable for those who has a slight nervous feeling about any pointy or sharp objects near the eyes.

John Carpenter is a shadow of the director he once was, undoubtedly he has made one of greatest, if not the greatest slasher movies of all time, which reinvented the genre which Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho first gave birth to in tremendous style. The major difference between the best works of Carpenter and The Ward the effective mixing of suspense and scares, The Ward is full of cheap, uninspired and bland scares.

2/5.