John Carpenter’s The Ward

A tremendously disappointing (and dispiriting) piece of work, John Carpenter’s The Ward details the horrific happenings within a mental ward for young girls (which houses, among others, Amber Heard’s Kirsten, Danielle Panabaker’s Sarah, and Mamie Gummer’s Emily). Screenwriters Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen initially offer up a slow-moving drama set within that aforementioned ward, with the less-than-enthralling atmosphere compounded by the presence of characters that are uniformly uninteresting and underdeveloped. The emphasis is placed all-too-frequently on the interaction between the girls and on their encounters with the floor’s seemingly kind doctor (Jared Harris’ Dr. Stringer), which ensures that one’s patience is tested on a fairly pronounced basis in the film’s early stages. Carpenter’s expectedly strong visuals stand as the film’s one overtly positive attribute, and it’s also worth noting that the filmmaker does a nice job of building suspense in the movie’s horror-oriented sequences (and there are a also a few appreciatively brutal instances of gore sprinkled here and there). The pervasive atmosphere of tedium ultimately ensures that certain revelations towards the end are simply not able to pack the punch one imagines they’re meant to, with the action-packed finale subsequently coming off as anticlimactic and underwhelming (ie it’s impossible to care who lives and who dies). The final straw comes with a last-minute twist that’s nothing short of ludicrous, and there’s little doubt that even a far more entertaining movie would’ve had problems seamlessly pulling that one off. Carpenter’s efforts at reinventing himself for a new generation have undoubtedly failed, and it does appear as though the once-reliable filmmaker has lost his way in a seemingly insurmountable manner.

** out of ****