DVD Review: John Carpenter’s The Ward

What happened to John Carpenter? The man who made Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China has until now not directed a feature-length movie in ten years and most of what he’s made in the past twenty years is way below par. He did make the underrated Vampires, and In the Mouth of Madness was kinda interesting, but that’s about it. No one wants to remember films such as Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Escape From L.A. and Ghosts of Mars, and Village of the Damned is mostly memorable for having Superman and Luke Skywalker in the same movie. It’s a real pity that this once great director has lost his clout and his ability to pick decent scripts. It’s an even bigger pity that it’s been ten years since his last film and the wait wasn’t worth it.

John Carpenter’s The Ward (as it’s called onscreen) is set in a women’s psychiatric ward in the 1960′s. It tells the tale of a young woman (Amber Heard) who’s new on the ward and finds that something strange is going on in there. For more info, here’s the trailer:

Let’s begin with the good stuff. The technical elements are solidly done. Carpenter has always known how and where to point the camera and the composition is very good here. The sound design is also pretty good. The actors are also pretty decent but not quite outstanding, though Jared Harris, playing the head psychiatrist, remains an interesting screen presence as usual.

The Ward is not a terrible film, aside from being nicely crafted it does manage to set things up so that not all the twists are predictable (though some are). But the thing is that there’s really nothing that surprises here, when the twists are revealed all you can say is “of course, I should have thought of that”. The whole thing is just so bland and uninspired and rather devoid of anything truly memorable or clever. It also relies a little too much on “boo” moments and in the end just isn’t very scary. Also, the characters are rather dull stereotypes. We’ve got the shy girl, the bitch, the artistic one, etc. and then there’s the head nurse who could just as well have been Nurse Ratched. The problem isn’t necessarily that the characters are stereotypes, it’s just that they don’t get anything interesting to do, they just behave in the cliched manner these types of characters have often done before.

Carpenter just seems to be going through the motions. He frames everything very nicely so it always looks good and there’s some effective use of lighting, but all to little avail. The film isn’t quite as dumb as these movies tend to be. Though it does seem to be dumb at times the final twist manages to explain some of the film’s holes, the story seems to be at least well thought out in that sense. But that only shows that a well thought out final twist is not always enough to make a good film. There’s just not enough meat on the bones.

If I wouldn’t have known that John Carpenter directed this film beforehand I probably wouldn’t have guessed it. His presence is not really felt and while he does add a little style to the material this could have been directed by just about anybody. He certainly deserves much better material rather than this run-of-the mill stuff which, understandably, barely got released theatrically. Let’s hope he manages to do something more interesting before he retires.

Final verdict: There’s just not really a lot to say about this film. It’s a pity that the director of The Thing and Halloween, two of the greatest horror films of all time, is saddled with such mediocrity these days. It is nicely crafted mediocrity and not as totally idiotic as many films of this genre tend to be but that’s the best that can be said about it.

Grade: 46/100