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- DVD: John Carpenter's The Ward
- Rating: PG-13
- Starring: Amber Heard, Jared Harris
- Written By: Michael Rasmussen, Shawn Rasmussen
- Directed By: John Carpenter
- Distributor: Arc Entertainment
- Original Year of Release: 2011
- Extras: See Below
- Series:
John Carpenter’s The Ward DVD Review
John Carpenter returns after a ten year absence By
Tim Janson
August 20, 2011
Amber Heard in John Carpenter's THE WARD(2011).
© Arc Entertainment
I tend to find it a little pretentious when a director has his name before the title of a film, especially when that film was essentially a direct-to-video release. But I supposed when your name is John Carpenter and you’ve given the world films like Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, Escape from New York, Christine, and Big Trouble in Little China, you can afford to float a little ego. But on the other hand, this is Carpenter’s first film as Director since the 2001’s under whelming Ghosts of Mars so the question is, does Carpenter still have “it”? And I can answer with an emphatic, “I don’t know!”
Carpenter is in territory that seems more comfortable to him than Ghosts of Mars with a smaller scale, smaller cast that is similar to Halloween. The film begins with a beautiful girl name Kristen (Heard) who is taken to a psychiatric hospital after burning down a farmhouse in the 1960s. Kristen has no idea why she is there and cannot remember much about her past other than fragments of being bound when she was a young girl.
Kristen shares the ward with several other young women including the vain and bossy Sarah (Danielle Panabaker); the tough and confrontational Emily (Mamie Gummer); the shy and child-like Zoey (Laura-Leigh) and the friendly and outgoing Iris (Lyndsey Fonseca). The girls are all under the care of head psychiatrist Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris) and the domineering Nurse Lundt (played by Susanna Burney doing her best Nurse Ratchet imitation).
Kristen notices things amiss in the ward such as a strange girl who walks the halls at night. After several escape attempts, some unlikely investigating of the nurses files, and intimidation of the other girls, Kristen learns about a patient named Alice who left before she arrived. She learns the other girls killed Kristen and now Kristen’s spirit has returned to wreak revenge…seemingly…
Carpenter has lost none of his skill to build suspense. He uses the 1960s to his advantage to play out the thriller in a more innocent era and in a time when psychiatry was entering a more enlightened period…although not too enlightened that shock therapy isn’t employed after one of Kristen’s violent escape episodes. Rather than making a perhaps too standard horror film Carpenter gives us a twist. Unfortunately it’s a twist that has been employed far too often in many other recent films and employed much better. I won’t name the films as it will give it away but on the other hand, Carpenter might just have well advertised it on a billboard as most people are going to see this coming from a mile away.
It’s almost as if Carpenter didn’t want to throw a what he might have thought was a cheap curve at viewers at the end of the film and ended up dropping so many hints that he gave away the whole thing. What a pity. The Ward has some nice elements. Topping the list is the simply gorgeous Amber Heard giving a very strong and complex performance as Kristen. She becomes Carpenter’s new Jamie Lee Curtis playing equal parts vulnerable victim and tough hero. In fact the entire cast is exceptionally good. The film supposedly had a limited theatrical release in July but if anyone saw it playing at a theater near him or her, raise your hand. It’s definitely better than other films that have received a wide release but disappointing because it could have been much better. But hopefully this outing will result in a resurgence for Carpenter.
DVD Extras
Audio Commentary with Director John Carpenter and actor Jared Harris
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The real question is:
Does this have the trademark Carpenter minimalist electronica soundtrack?