I can’t write too much about John Carpenter’s latest film, The Ward, which has already been shown overseas and gets one of those “video-on-demand and in cinemas” releases in the USA soon (not being a marketing genius, I don’t understand this plan, but The Ward isn’t the first to follow this route so I suppose it works, somehow).  Not that the film doesn’t deserve discussion, but it’s one of those…things.  Twist ending, y’know.  Can’t reveal the secret.  Not that I would, deliberately, but the plot and the film’s style/form are inextricable and criticising the latter might prove a “spoiler” for the former.

            Sometimes I begin composing my comments during the screening of a film, and I was making a mental list of inconsistencies and annoying oversights and illogical aspects while watching The Ward.  The mental hospital where the action of the film takes place is a huge facility, and yet appears virtually empty, aside from a few introductory shots—once into the film proper, we see almost no one outside the Ward itself, and not necessarily because the Ward is depicted as a high-security, isolated unit. This is a very insular movie, which is alright, but reminding us with periodic shots that the Ward is only one part of a gigantic building is disconcerting, a bit.  It’s also curious that 5 “special” (so we’re told) patients are cared for by one doctor, one nurse, and one-and-a-half orderlies, apparently on duty 24 hours a day.  Furthermore, the “ghost” combines supernatural abilities with a seemingly-contradictory physical solidity.  It also feels odd that…well, let’s just say there are other things which are rather “off.”

            Now, I’m not sure if these annoying bits are the result of sloppy filmmaking or if they’re deliberate clues to which I should have been more attentive.  Oh, it’s so frustrating not to be able to discuss this!  Must…restrain…myself…don’t…give…away…the…ending….

            Without revealing too much: The Ward tells the story of Kristen, a young woman sent to a mental hospital after burning down an abandoned farmhouse.  She’s put in “the Ward,” with a small group of other young, female patients: arty Iris, snotty Sarah, sarcastic Emily, child-like Zoey.  They’re under the watchful eye of stern Nurse Lundt and brusque orderly Roy, and are given treatment by British-accented Dr. Stringer.  The rebellious Kristen repeatedly tries to escape, and also begins to suspect the ward is haunted by the ghost of Alice Hudson, a former patient (which only makes her want to escape even more).  That’s the cue for the body count to begin!

            So…it’s Shutter Island meets Sucker Punch with a soupçon of Veronika Decides to Die?  Pretty much, yeah.  Of course, The Ward has plenty of other mental hospital-women’s prison movies to emulate as well: The Snake Pit, Session 9, The Fifth Floor, Shock Corridor, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Nurse Lundt is pretty close to being a Nurse Ratched clone), etc. All the cliched situations are all here: Kristen is given drugs to “relax” her but she feigns taking them so she remains alert; her failure to cooperate is punished with shock treatment; she makes friends and enemies among the other patients, and takes Zoey under her wing.  She sees the scary Alice but no one else does (or at least they won’t admit it), and they explain her visions away as delusions of her confused mind.

            The Ward is slick and generally entertaining, with a few “jumps” but not too many surprises or legitimate scares.  The film doesn’t have that almost existential atmosphere of fear and dread that would make it a truly memorable work.  The conclusion is clever enough but this doesn’t make up for the competent, professional, but ultimately routine nature of what has gone on before.  There is a fundamental difference between a provocative film which challenges the audience throughout, and a film which has a “twist” ending that prompts one to re-view the movie to retrospectively find the “clues” (a la The Sixth Sense).  The first says “here’s a puzzle for you to solve,” while the latter concludes by saying “ha ha, fooled you!”  Both can be entertaining (film companies might prefer the latter type, since it might encourage repeat business) and either can be annoying—it depends upon the film itself, and on the individual viewer. 

            The performers in The Ward are all satisfactory, but—once again—do not rise above the expected: Amber Heard is resourceful and determined as Kristen, exhibiting more of the physical and mental toughness she displayed in Drive Angry, Danielle Panabaker and Mamie Gummer are bitchy, Jared Harris is alternately soothing and sinister as Dr. Stringer, and so on.   The script simply does not explore the characters in any significant depth (and this is because…oops, almost let something slip there) and thus the actors turn in mostly one-note performances.  The production values are fine, and the technical work is quite polished, although at least one of the murders (an electrocution) goes on much too long for my taste.  The camera carefully lingers on the gory results, a bit of “fan service” for a certain segment of the audience, I suppose.  I’m not squeamish and this didn’t affect me in that way, I simply thought it was gross-out effects for the sake of showing gross-out effects.

            I have considerable respect and affection for John Carpenter’s body of work.  I remember watching Dark Star in the mid-’70s, going to see Assault on Precinct 13 at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore when it was first released, viewing Halloween multiple times, even recognising the care that went into his first TV-movie, Someone’s Watching Me!  In the ’80s (ah, the ’80s…) I didn’t see all of Carpenter’s efforts—skipping Starman and Christine, for instance—but did appreciate The Fog, They Live, Escape from New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China.  Carpenter, in my opinion, has made more consistently interesting and entertaining movies than, for instance, Wes Craven, another “horror director” (although this stereotypes and short-changes both men). 

            This sounds a bit like an eulogy for Carpenter’s directorial career, and while The Ward is something of a “comeback” film (it’s the first feature he’s directed since 2001), it’s neither amazingly good nor seriously disappointing.  Carpenter is too talented to make a really bad film, and yet in this case he falls short of making a really special one.  The Ward is satisfactory entertainment, no doubt about it, but it’s no Halloween.