The Ward
(2010)
(SPOILERS) I’d felt no particular compunction to rush out
and see The Ward (or rent it), partly
down to the underwhelming reviews, but mostly because John Carpenter’s last few
films had been so disappointing, and I doubted a decade away from the big
screen would rejuvenate someone who’d rather play computer games than call the
shots. Perhaps inevitably then, now I have finally given it a look, it’s a case
of low expectations being at least surpassed. The Ward isn’t very good, but it isn’t outright bad either.
While it seems obvious in retrospect, I failed to guess the
twist before it was revealed, probably because I was still expecting a
supernatural element to be realised, it being a Carpenter movie. But then, this
doesn’t feel very much like a Carpenter movie. It doesn’t have a Carpenter
score (Mark Killian) or screenplay (Michael and Shawn Rasmussen) and it doesn’t
have Gary B Kibbe as lenser (Yaron Orbach). I suspect the latter explains why
it’s a much more professional, polished affair than the previous run of
Carpenters, but it also means it lacks his sometimes-shonky personal stamp; you
expect slightly duff editing or staging in even his best movies, and it feels
as if there’s something a little off when the results are this smooth.
The casting too. While the mental hospital setting isn’t
outside his purview (an escape from one kicks off Halloween, after all, and the exterior here recalls the one in In the Mouth of Madness), its occupants
very much are, suggesting exactly the kind of slasher movie he studiously
avoided making during the early ‘80s when all around were copying his one foray
badly; a quintet of addled young women in an otherwise empty facility are more
suggestive of an extended slumber party massacre than anything arrestingly
oddball. Aside from Jared Harris as the facility’s therapist Dr Singer, though,
they’re hardly redolent of the mainstream-vying likes of Starman and Memoirs of an
Invisible Man.
Amber Heard (Kristen), now forever more associated with her
ex’s alleged abusive behaviour than her acting, is fine in the lead, but
overshadowed by showier personalities in Meryl’s little girl Mamie Gummer as nuttier
element Emily and Danielle Pananbaker as flirt Sarah. As the girls’ numbers are
whittled down by a former patient they (with the exception of Kristen) teamed
up to kill, Carpenter throws in such assorted asylum tropes as electroshock, lobotomies,
sinister psychiatrists, predatory guards and Ratchet-like nurses (Susanna
Burney, memorable as Nurse Lundt).
Unfortunately, none of it is very arresting. As far as the
twist is concerned, it comes after a decade of “They were all X all along”
fake-out narratives that began with Fight
Club and took in (most absurdly) Identity
and Shutter Island, the latter two
being explicitly, like The Ward,
about a far-fetched method of treating the patient. Shutter Island, released the same year as The Ward, received all the attention due to its respected director
and star power but is actually a much sillier piece for how elaborate and
overblown it is. The Ward has the
benefit of a halfway decent variation on the twist – the protagonist is
actually an antagonist to the true protagonist, who is only antagonistic
because she is attempting to reclaim her addled mind – if you really must go down this road, but Carpenter
does next to nothing to make it engrossing. That’s the problem with The Ward all over. It’s serviceable but
completely lacking in personality, which is the last thing you want from a
Carpenter movie. Even a bad Carpenter movie felt like a Carpenter movie.
At the time, Carpenter was talking up a couple of future projects
(“a little gothic western”, “a high-gloss psychological thriller” and
an adaptation of comic book Darkchylde)
but “right now, I’m concentrating all my
energies on the NBA playoffs”. Which sounds about right. I wouldn’t hold my
breath for another picture from the director. While others of his era (Dante,
De Palma, Gilliam) struggle to get their next projects together, Carpenter
seems entirely content just to kick back.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.