The Ward

In 2001, John Carpenter directed Ghosts of Mars, and it was pretty terrible.  It was so bad that, even with Ice Cube, Jason Statham, and Pam Grier in the cast, the movie never even approached being an entertainingly bad action movie.  In recent years, Carpenter has let others remake his films (Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, The Fog, etc.), but hasn't written or directed anything for the big screen in a long time.  The Ward is his first movie in ten years.  Was it worth the wait?  The answer to that question is an emphatic "no."

Ghost of Mars The Ward

Kristen (Amber Heard) was found alone in a nightgown, with no memory, in front of a farmhouse that she burned down by local police.  What do you do with a half-dressed pyromaniac, suffering from amnesia?  Throw her in the looney bin, of course! 

Not crazy enough to smudge her makeup, though

Kristen is placed in The Ward, which is apparently a specialized psychiatric wing that focuses solely on (mostly) attractive women in their twenties.  Note to self: if I ever open a psychiatric care facility, take only model-quality patients.  There are only a few (four!) other girls in The Ward, which seems both impractical and unlikely; granted, the film does take place in 1966, but even The Snake Pit had more patients than this.  Sarah (Danielle Panabaker) is the local mean girl, Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca) is the nice girl, Zoey (Laura-Leigh) acts like a frightened child, and Emily (Mamie Gummer) acts like a crazy person.

Why so serious?

Naturally, Kristen wants to escape this overcrowded hell hole, because amnesia and pyromania are not symptoms of mental illness.  She tries and fails, repeatedly.  In the process, she encounters what appears to be a ghost in The Ward.

Surprisingly, ghosts rarely have tangled hair.  Why is that?

No one seems surprised to hear her allegations, but no one will talk to her about it.  But then, the girls start disappearing one by one, victims of the ghost.  Why is this ghost killing insane women?  Why does she have it out for Kristen, who couldn't have possibly done anything wrong to the ghost?  The answer is underwhelming.

My biggest problem with The Ward was the odd nature of the ghost.  I suppose you can explain everything away with the twist ending, but...ugh...I don't want to.  The Ward is set up as a haunting story.  Something bad has happened, and a ghost is terrorizing these girls.  Simple enough.  The ghost seems to have the ability to show up anywhere, at any time.  And yet, ghost attacks are staggered over several days.  And the ghost obviously has a physical presence, since it snatches Kristen's blanket (what a bitch!), leaves behind a charm bracelet, and chokes, stabs, slices, and electrocutes different girls. 

Strapped in by a ghost who understands electrical equipment

What the hell kind of ghost is this?  If it wasn't for the creepy face and the teleporting, I would assume that the ghost was a real person.  And how do you defeat this killer ghost?  SPOILER ALERT: With a freakin' axe to the chest.  Of course that works; I've always felt that Ghostbusters was exaggerating the problem.  Yes, there is a twist that (kind of) explains these things (sort of), but the simple fact that no one in the movie notices how strange any of this is bugs the crap out of me.  All it would take is a couple of lines commenting about how ghosts don't steal blankets or ghosts don't usually have murders covered up by hospitals , but the audience isn't even given that much.

The acting in The Ward is not fantastic, but it is adequate for this story.  Amber Heard is decent as the main girl (the one with common sense), Danielle Panabaker is mediocre as a snotty stereotype, and Laura-Leigh overacted as the timid gal with a childish mentality.  Lyndsy Fonseca's character was a little less basic, and I thought she was fine as the friendly polite girl.  Oddly enough, Heard, Panabaker, and Fonseca played crazy characters that didn't look or act crazy at all.

Bitchy?  Maybe.  Crazy?  No.

Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter, was given the only role that required someone to act crazy.  I'm not sure how much I liked her.  Yes, she acted crazy, and yes, she was annoying.  It's not the worst crazy performance I have seen, but it sticks out here because the "crazy" women tend to act very normally.  Jared Harris isn't very impressive as the doctor masterminding the plot, but I will give him credit for seeming appropriately sympathetic and secretive.  None of the acting is particularly noteworthy, but none of it is awful.  After all, this is a John Carpenter film, and his stories are usually the focus.

I was very disappointed with John Carpenter's writing and direction.   I have nothing against plot twists, but The Ward's twist effectively negates any investment the audience might have made in the characters.  This twist was eerily (and unfortunately) close to the twist in Identity, and that twist suuuuuuucks.  If the script was tighter, the twist may have been revelatory, but it wound up simply feeling manipulative.  As for Carpenter's direction, his pacing was off from the start.  The only scares come in the form of "the audience sees something behind a character" startles, and they weren't even effective most of the time.  Thanks to the ridiculous story (which he wrote), the actors were given an excuse to portray their characters as shallow cliches, which makes this film even less fun to watch.  The Ward is just an all-around miss from a master craftsman that should have known better.

Ten years after his (arguably) worst film, John Carpenter returned with a vengeance.  Unfortunately, not in a good way.  I wasn't expecting a whole lot, given the cast, but I had hoped for a decent thriller or some classic Carpenter horror.  Instead, I was bored and had my intelligence insulted.

Other things that bothered me in The Ward:

• Apparently, the same nurse and patient-wrangler-guy work 24-7, and do not have any relief shifts.
• If the ghost can teleport, why does it take her so long to kill people?  Yes, the twist kind of explains it, but it bothers me that no one else asked.
• Why is Kristen the only one clever enough to escape from her room at night?  It took her, like, ten minutes to craft an escape.  None of the others have come up with anything after presumably months in the hospital?
• Why is the ghost's face disfigured?  That doesn't match the way she died whatsoever.