The Ward
2011 Directed by John Carpenter
Synopsis
Only Sanity Can Keep You Alive
A thriller centered on an institutionalized young woman who becomes terrorized by a ghost.
Cast
Popular reviews
More-
While it is putting it mildly to say that THE WARD is in no way comparable to John Carpenter in his prime, it is not the disaster I had been expecting. It's basically GIRL, INTERRUPTED with ghosts!
The film stars Amber Heard as Kristen, a young woman missing most of her memory who has recently been committed to an asylum for burning down an empty farmhouse (she can't remember why). Once she meets her fellow patients (a predictably but entertainingly varied group) she finds herself knee-deep in a mystery involving several missing former patients and the creepy, zombie-faced ghost girl who roams the halls at night.
For most of its running time, THE WARD is an agreeably silly haunted house…
-
John.....What the fuck happened, man? Put your game face on the next time for Christ's sake!
-
This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
-
The worst part about this movie is that it's directed by John Carpenter. If it was just some schmo I had never heard of this would just be another bad horror movie that I would forget about, but because it was directed by Carpenter I won't forget it.
Every time I watch The Thing and I start thinking "I wish Carpenter would direct another horror movie..." I'll be reminded of The Ward before I even finish the thought. When I watch Big Trouble in Little China and wish he would do another film with Kurt Russell I'll be reminded that his last film was The Ward. I'm not saying I won't still enjoy his films from the 70s, 80s and 90s, but my hope for a great new John Carpenter film took a fatal hit by watching this.
I do think this is marginally better then Ghosts of Mars so at least there's that.
-
1 Stern für Amber
1 Stern für die Kills
1 Stern für das EndeRest ist Durchschnittsware
-
Turning off a movie before the end is alot like killing a hooker before you have sex with her. You'll always wonder if you missed out on the best sex of your life, but you'll know deep down that you did the right thing. The ward is one of the few hookers I killed before sex.
Recent reviews
More-
This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.
-
John Carpenter, I have missed you.
The sizzling mind that brought us such great movies as Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing and Escape From New York.
The easily-identifiable John Carpenter soundtrack (even when it was done by Tangerine Dream -- remember them?). The tension, the clever twists, the humour, the sheer fucking genius.
I've missed it all.
Even the duds have been exceptional in their own way. I actually liked Ghosts of Mars, Christine and The Fog.
John Carpenter, I have missed you.
After a well-deserved nine-year break from movies, John Carpenter returns with perhaps the single most generic horror movie ever made in The Ward.
Generic girls playing generic characters being hunted…
-
This movie pissed me off. It did a terrible job of getting where it was tying to go.
Set in 1966, it's about a young woman named Kristin who is caught burning a farmhouse down and brought to a mental institution. While there, she meets four other girls. And a ghost-zombie thing that starts killing them off.
This movie copies almost everything from other movies, and shoves them together even though they don't fit. The mental hospital is staffed by the stupidest workers, who all happen to leave at the worst times (of course). The doctor is seems to have sinister plans for the girls (of course) and the main nurse is angry and mean (of course). It brings up…
-
She just wanted her bunny back
-
John Carpenter, I love you man, but......What was that poop?! My feelings for this are similar to that of The Grudge, its a bland story with bland characters which relies solely on jump scares which are incredibly loud and annoying. It drags a lot and the characters are incredibly annoying mainly due to the acting, the actresses seem to think when playing an insane person you must act completely loopy and eccentric. Also, the workers at the 'wards' idea of security is ridiculous, the girls get away with nearly everything, it is so easy for them to sneak around and enter peoples rooms/offices. The big bad ghost, Alice, isn't frightening and just looks like a zombie from Walking Dead or something similar. I expected much better.
-
As a big fan of John Carpenter this kills me to say it.......John Carpenter is a bad director!!! Now whether this means that films such as The Thing, Escape From New York and Halloween were flukes or that he's just lost it in his old age. If you look back at all the films he's done in the past 25 years, they have all been poor including this one. It was dull, predictable and badly made. If I hadn't have known I'd have thought it had come from an amateur not someone nicknamed "The Master". Sorry John but your days are up.
-
Tales from the Darkside meets Girl Interrupted.
-
This was a passable low budget horror film from one of the masters. It's certainly not anywhere near being a new classic or even a hidden gem, but John Carpenter can still direct. He does a very effective job here milking dread from subtle camera moves, and understanding the inherent tension in certain images, like light shining up through air vents, or the claustrophobic sensation of viewing a room through the tiny window in a hospital door. Unfortunately, there are also a number of missteps. The setup is that Kristen (Amber Heard) gets checked into a mental hospital but doesn't know why she's there. Four other girls populate her hall, all mysteriously allowed to dress in contemporary '60s threads, and…
-
Booooooooring...