Pretty Good

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Carpenter's early films were not even half as scary as this film, as someone who was growing up with his films since the early 80's, to me The Ward is a triumph, even a few seconds of the score or just few images of the film can scare me to death, Carpenter hit something deep within the psyche of the collective consciousness., a truly powerful film setting the stage and an imprint for artistic expressions about the discovery of identity and its redemptive freedom within the theme of mental illness and fluidity of reality. The same like Halloween, there was Black Christmas and Texas Chainsaw Massacre before too, just like there were a few others before The Ward too within the span of 10 years, but all of them together are part of a new wave. Nothing comes along alone, or standing apart, everything always comes in groups, everything, all inventions, all new things are reflected by others wihout being aware of one another, because everything is connected in this universe. The Ward is a reminder of our inter-connectedness at a microscopic level, there's many lives and personalities inside of us, reflecting us, in our private universe as well as this wider universe.

Just watch something else, trust me it's rubbish. ......................................

Set in 1966 Amber Heard plays Kristen who sets fire to a farm house and consequently finds herself in a psychiatric hospital, which appears to have only a handful of young, attractive female patients. She soon becomes convinced of an evil presence in the shape of a female ghost. Hardly original, there are countless movies about haunted mental asylums, and to be honest most of them are rubbish. But with horror maestro John Carpenter at the helm surely this was going to be good. It's well acted, has good production values, a few cheap jump scares, a couple of gore scenes, a reasonable twist ending and a good closing credits musical score. Sadly the film is just not scary, or even memorable. Apart from the fact that it is a John Carpenter movie that's a million miles from his classics.

John Carpenter without a doubt, has shown ingenious taste in the horror and science- fiction genre; his success either the slasher classic 'Halloween' and the sci-fi/horror hybrid 'The Thing' speak loud volumes. His success continues for many years to come before taking a ten-year hiatus from the silver screen after his failure with the science-fiction thriller 'Ghost of Mars' in 2001. This supernatural thriller sees Carpenter return to the big screen, but the results show that Carpenter seems to have lost his flair over the ten years of his break. From an acclaimed director like Carpenter, you would expect to be awarded with great scares, an entertaining plot, and maybe some characters you come to care about, all of which this seems half empty of. To worse, this movie falls deep into elements that feel awfully familiar to other more superior horror flicks. So what's the story here? The film is set in 1966 in Oregon where we meet young runaway Kristen (played by Amber Heard) who is arrested by the cops after destroying an old farmhouse, letting it burst into flames. Subsequently, he is sent to a mental rehabilitation center where she meets psychiatric Dr. Gerald Stringer (played by Jared Harris) who performs mysterious experiments on his patients along with her inmates Emily (played by Mamie Gummer), Sarah (played by Danielle Panabaker), Iris (played by Lyndsey Fonseca), and Zoey (played by Laura Leigh). Soon, Kristen and her inmates begin terrorized by the ghost of former patient Alice Leigh Hudson (played by Mika Boorem) who was murdered after an escape attempt.John Carpenter has seen better days of filmmaking in his career than this, but has also seen worse. Compared to his other projects, this is just one of his minor entries so expectations may pave low, even for die-hard John Carpenter fans. Sadly, most of his appealing style he brought to his projects back in the 70s and 80s seem lost here. As this movie was done a rather tight budget, there is only some much Carpenter can spit out. The film has some scares that fall into category of hit-and-miss, some of them are effective such as the shower scene, others however are either dull, clichéd, or just cheesy jump scares likely make you shrug your shoulders than jump in fright. Many of the scares are associated with a creepy music score by Mark Kilian which fits quite well for the somber atmosphere. If you are someone who grows tiresome of constant jump scares, then brace yourself because there's a lot of these. John Carpenter also piles some elements that have been executed better on other horror entries including the ghost of Alice Leigh Hudson that look lot like the deformed little girl from the Exorcist movies, but it's certainly not enough to fulfill a terrifying experience to please viewers. The twist ending however, fits surprisingly effective and fills plenty of nuance to the story, even if feels borrowed from other films. Lastly, the performances by the cast particularly Amber Heard, Danielle Panabaker, Mamie Gummer, Lyndsey Fonseca, and Laura Leigh fit the bill, not likely to go down as any of the memorable roles in their careers.While it is nice to John Carpenter make comeback on his career, it's somewhat disappointing to see that his return had to be this one. This movie is a disposable supernatural vehicle that is bound to leave at least some horror fans satisfied but leave others vastly disappointed and yearning for better efforts.