First things first, he didn’t write the thing (which is also the case with some of his earlier classics), and he didn’t score it, so immediately that makes the film less John Carpentery, right off the bat (before having watched The Ward). Now I’ve seen it, I think that wild pre-conception there, as erratically conceived as it may be, stand’s up quite well. The Ward was ok, I enjoyed it, it had some cool imagery, some “ok” tension, but the scares were cheap, it was jumpy (as opposed to scary), there were too many “jumps”! The set ups for the “jumps” were predictable (as they are meant to be, that’s part of why they work) unoriginal, and maybe even lazy. I am not going to go into my anti jumpy film rant again, I think I said everything I needed to say on the matter in my Insidious review (which wasn’t actually a cheap thrill flick). But what am I forgetting here………Hmm…….Which film maker, if any is probably more responsible for this kind of scare/thrill more than any other, which film makers techniques/formulas have probably been copied more than any others? And I am talking about horror movies and techniques employed to scare you, to make you jump, shots and composition designed to un-nerve you. Well most of you may know, some won’t, others will not even care, that John Carpenter is pretty much the godfather of this Genre. He made Halloween, and Halloween isn’t just another movie, Halloween is a film way ahead of its time, it scared people back in the 70’s in ways they hadn’t ever been scared before. John Carpenter was a master of scaring the shit out of you in an instant just like Hitchcock was the master of scaring you over a longer drawn out period of time.
John Carpenter isn’t just another film maker, he is up there with the greats, why is he you may ask? Because he was an innovator, his films and his characters have become modern day cultural icons. I was in a Halloween store 2 days ago, and Michael Myers costumes and masks were one of the most identifiable things in the shop (along with Freddy and Jason), but he didn’t just create this character, he pioneered the slasher genre! Carpenter created new ways to scare people, and with that came 100’s upon 100’s of films over the next 30 years that are (still) trying to do exactly the same thing, using the same tried and tested techniques, John Carpenters techniques.
I don’t want to jump ahead of myself and start insulting what John Carpenter has made here in 2011 (shot in 2010). I don’t think he was trying to push boundaries any further, and I definitely would not like to offend anyone and say he has become a parody of himself, because that’s just not true. What I think, The Ward is the perfect kind of material John Carpenter needs to get back behind the camera and make a movie. John Carpenter is never going to make another Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York (Escape from LA doesn’t count), They Live, BTILC. Just like Landis will never make another American Werewolf in London, Coppola will never make another Godfather, and George Lucas wasn’t ever going to make another star wars (although he did try). There’s always the possibility, but these film makers, Coppola, Carpenter, Lucas & Landis didn’t know what kind of ground they were going to break when they made their classics, I don’t think it works like that. Orson Welles didn’t say to himself “I’m going to make one of the most loved and respected pieces of cinema that will be used to teach students in film schools all over the world” before he made Citizen Kane. Again, it’s always possible, you know, Landis might make a movie 5 years from now that will become an all-time classic. I am really not trying to use the cynical point of view; I’m really just saying it’s unlikely. And John Carpenter was not trying to redefine a genre (horror) he helped pioneer, he was making a movie using material he obviously liked and saw potential in.
Sent to a mental institution in the late 1950’s, a young girl (Amber Heard) is put on a ‘Ward’ with a group of female mental patients. The big thing is..... They are terrorized by some kind of ghost/demon like physical entity that can appear pretty much anywhere at any time. The thing looks pretty bad ass, reminded me a lot of Skeletor (Masters of the Universe) but apparently female, and slightly more Evil, if you can get more evil that Skeletor! We are given pretty much 2 solid acts of these girls being terrorized and killed by the thing, but there’s no real explanation as to what exactly it is we (they) are dealing with. Some things just don’t add up, people are dying, and there’s no mention of it, they just disappear, there’s no blame, investigation, suspects. They die and they’re gone and nobody says anything. I just couldn’t understand why this is because the world seems completely normal, the characters are all individuals with individual personalities and it’s just a matter of which girl is next.
Through this lack of apparent interest in these murders, from the outside and from the staff, we know there is a twist, there’s an explanation behind what’s happening to the dead girls. For starters, the evil thing “who is apparently a former patient called Alice” seems to have the ultimate superpower, teleportation, she can appear anywhere at any time and kill. It makes for some “jumpy” moments (awesome) and is the perfect tool to easily (arguably cheaply) build tension, but it’s totally out there as to exactly what she is.
There’s plenty of unexplained things the characters do, somehow the facility is easy to escape from, there are grates in the toilets that can be unscrewed using a coin, you only need to shove tissue inside the cell doors to prevent them becoming locked at night, the whole facility is pretty much left unlocked (apart from the main door to the ward). It’s easy to get out of taking the sedatives the doctors keep giving to the patients. It really felt like the audience was not meant to question this world too much, it’s lack of detail in terms of the facility, the security, the almost ghostly attitude that all of the staff seem to possess, (possible)SPOILER: It starts to make you ask the question, is this world actually real?
Even though I do in some reviews, I’m not going to say what happens in case you haven’t seen The Ward and you like John Carpenter and plan on watching it. Let me just say, there is a twist, and it is a twist in the classic sense. If you really start to question every minor detail after the real situation is revealed you could easily find some plot holes. There’s a couple of huge gapers coming from my direction believe me.
Not too distant from Shutter Island territory, The Ward is a much simpler psychological horror with more emphasis on scares and cheap thrills than plot and mystery. But I do have to admit, although I don’t care for Jumpy films, I did mostly enjoy The Ward. But, unfortunately It didn’t make me want to watch it again as soon as I knew what was going on, like ‘The Usual Suspects’, ‘Shutter Island’,’ The Others’ and ‘The Sixth Sense’ did (I use those films as comparisons as they clearly have the same kind of alternative angle through which you can view the film again once all is revealed).
What this movie really did do for me, is tell me that John Carpenter is back! All he needs now is Kurt Russell, a synthesizer, a great script and an investor that loves movies!
