Blogorium Review: The Ward

 After leaving Tuesday's Retro Review of Vampires and Ghosts of Mars on a sour note, it was something of a relief to finish The Ward, John Carpenter's first feature-length film in nearly a decade, and to find it was pretty good. Not great, not very original, or even as scary as it could have been, but it's miles and miles away from the last three projects Carpenter was involved in. Ghosts of Mars is garbage, Cigarette Burns and Pro-Life (both from Showtime's Masters of Horror series) were borderline unwatchable. I don't mean to set the bar too low for The Ward, because I think there's enough going for the film that if it didn't have the words "John Carpenter's" before the title, people might not be expecting an instant classic. It's not an instant classic, but I enjoyed most of the film (more on that later).

 Kristen (Amber Heard), a teenage girl in 1966, is discovered by police after burning down a remote farmhouse dressed in nothing more than a nightgown. She is taken to North Bend psychiatric hospital and put under the care of Doctor Stringer (Jared Harris), who places her in a special ward for troubled girls. She meets Emily (Mamie Gummer), Sarah (Danielle Panabaker), Zoey (Laura-Lee), and Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca), who each suffer from their own trauma. The girls are haunted by the ghost of Alice Hudson (Mika Boorem), a patient they murdered and who is exacting her revenge. Can Kristen escape before Alice kills the girls off, or is she the next victim of the ward?

 My first inclination when looking at the synopsis of The Ward was to think of the obvious parallels to Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch (which might explain why The Ward has yet to see an American release date), but to be honest it falls away quickly. The parallels are superficial at best: yes, there are a group of girls in the 1960s trying to escape a mental asylum, but that's where the comparisons stop. I was pleasantly surprised that Carpenter and screenwriters Michael and Shawn Rassmussen hold back from the stereotypical "asylum" staff: Nurse Lundt (Susanna Burney) is less Nurse Ratched than I expected and there's no excessive physical abuse or rape-y guards. In fact, during one my favorite small moments, Sarah is hitting on Roy (D.R. Anderson), an overworked orderly, and he turns her down flatly and tells her to go away because he has too much to do.

 Touches like this help off-set the fact that during Kristen's escape attempts, everyone standing in her way just seems to stand up and walk off when she needs to get past them, or other convenient plot elements that build towards the inevitable "twist" ending. The Ward is a film that does many things right: Carpenter's camerawork and shot selection are clever (there's a particular shot in a dumb-waiter that I'm not sure I've seen in a horror film before), so it makes up for some obvious "jump" scares. The cast is all very good, with the very busy Amber Heard leading the pack, but also very nice turns from Jared Harris, Laura-Lee, and particularly Mamie Gummer, who transitions from obnoxious to sympathetic so naturally I was pleasantly surprised. There's also a nice effect done on Alice's arms and face to make it look like worms are wriggling underneath the skin. It has to be digital but felt organic in the context of the scene.

 (Borderline SPOILER ahead) I think the element of The Ward I had the hardest time with involved the "twist" at the end, one that borrows - in plot structure and execution - the ending of a movie I really don't like. I say "borderline" with the "spoiler" warning because it all depends on whether you've seen Identity or not. If you have, you immediately know how The Ward ends, and yeah, it's pretty much beat for beat the same explanation and last second shock (although Carpenter's is a clever play on the trailer for Prince of Darkness). Would it matter if I hadn't hated Identity so much? I'm not sure, but if you've seen Identity, there's no surprise in The Ward. There's nothing particularly new that Carpenter's camerawork or the cast can overcome, so it becomes a sort of exercise in futility as soon as you realize what purpose Alice Hudson's ghost serves, why the staff regards Kristen the way they do, or what the flashbacks signify.( End of the "kind-of" SPOILER)

 Based on the reviews I've seen around the internet, The Ward is getting mixed ratings because it is a John Carpenter film. Had anyone else directed The Ward, I suspect the level of disappointment might be muted, but because his track record accentuates the great films over the okay ones, anything less than Halloween is deemed to be a failure. The Ward is by no means a failure, even if I was underwhelmed by the "twist" and some of the plot contrivances. Most of the film is engrossing, well acted, and suspensful, even if you know where it's going*. I think that even if I wasn't so disappointed in what Carpenter had been doing between 2000 and 2010, I would find enough in The Ward to recommend the film. It doesn't re-invent the horror wheel, but it's definitely worth checking out the latest from this "master of horror."



* Full disclosure, I knew the "twist" going in because the first review I read mentioned Identity.