The Ward (2010)

I came across this while looking for movies for my collaboration with The Film Connoisseur (link is to that post) for Halloween. I couldn't believe that a John Carpenter film had only a limited European release, and a DTV release here in the States. A John Carpenter flick should be a big deal, not fly in under the radar. (Also, if you've seen this and you comment and give away the ending-- or say what movie it's similar to--, I won't publish it. I don't want to ruin it for anyone.)

The Ward has Amber Heard as a girl in 1960s Oregon who is caught setting a farmhouse on fire, and is sent to the lockdown ward of a state mental facility. There she meets her four fellow inmates, plus the mysterious fifth one, Alice, who is a ghost that is slowly bumping them off. Heard doesn't find this situation acceptable at all, and tries her best to escape. Can she do it before Alice gets her as well?



I thought this was an excellent movie. You can see why John Carpenter is a horror master, because he hits all the right spots here, from the suspense, the tension, the creepiness, and then the brutality in the kills. How this was lost in the shuffle is beyond me, because it has the chops to compete in the US theatrical market. Maybe he personally didn't want to work with the big production houses. I don't know, and I'm not so sure I care either, because either way, this falls through the cracks and ends up in our laps, and we're better for it.

It really is startling though, when you page through Carpenter's bio, and you see all the big names, The Thing, They Live, Halloween, Escape from New York, Escape from LA, I could go on. The last one he did was Ghosts of Mars, which I saw in the theater back in 2002. I wouldn't put this one up there with any of his great classics, but from a director of his stature, this still delivers.



I was trying to figure out where I recognized Danielle Panabaker, who played the resident vamp in The Ward, from, and it turns out she was the guy from Supernatural's partner in Friday the 13th, where she got a really raw deal I thought-- I mean, she's helping the hero out the whole time and Jason still kills her, where's the justice in that? Anyway, she was the only one outside of Amber Heard that I recognized, but I thought the whole cast did a pretty decent job. They were all supposed to play one-notes, and sometimes doing that well is too tall an order, but for them it wasn't, and gave the movie that women in prison film mixed with supernatural thriller feel that I think Carpenter was going for.

Getting back to Carpenter, I've noticed in doing this blog how much modern horror directors draw from Carpenter, so it was weird to have one of his films come into our orbit. How many bad DTV horror flicks have I seen that try to cop the Carpenter aesthetic, from the darkened locations, to the danger racing across the screen in the background. One thing they almost never get right though is Carpenter's attention to detail, and that was evident here. He never lets a moment slip that isn't in some way a tension builder or a prop or extra that isn't somehow creepy or carries with him or her an element of danger. Even in this one, that isn't one of his best, it's still that much better than a lot of his imitators.



If you don't already know this, I'm putting it out there for you now: I'm a straight guy. And as a straight guy, I take a horror movie that takes place in a mental institution with an all young female cast for granted. I also take for granted that they're all going to be hot. I wonder though, could this movie be made with all young dudes? Us straight guys wouldn't like it, but are there enough straight women and gay men that would get into the shower scenes and all the stereotypes? Or do straight women enjoy an all hot women in a mental institution horror flick as much as straight guys do?

I enjoyed this movie-- though it might just be the straight male in me. This has all the makings of a fell through the cracks DTV gem, and with John carpenter directing, can you expect anything less? Sorry I couldn't get more into specifics about what I liked, but, again, I don't want to give too much away, because this is worth checking out if you haven't already, and I don't want to ruin it for you.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1369706/