The Ward

You guys know that I’m a big time Carpenterant which means I was really excited to check out his new movie The Ward.  He hasn’t done one in nine years not counting those two short films he did for the Masters of Horror series.  And I’m sad to say that it’s not very good.  If you’ve heard that this ain’t no Ghosts of Mars then I’m here to tell ya that it’s true.  I mean I don’t want to give the impression that it’s total garbage ‘cause it’s not.  But it felt like it was the work of a veteran director who usually does other types of pictures and this is the first time he’s trying his hand at horror.  You and I know Carpenter’s better than this.  It was more sad to watch than anything else because of the potential.  Not the potential in the material exactly but the potential that this could’ve been John’s first step towards an awesome comeback.

I can sum the whole movie up by saying that it’s basically the same film as another one but I don’t want to tell you which one because then it’ll give shit away.  Overall The Ward is boring and pretty uninteresting.  We don’t get to know the characters that well and they don’t really have any depth.  I mean there’s a reason for this but I thought John would go with something cooler.  The dialogue and acting is also pretty bad.  John knows how to get badass performances out of his actors but it didn’t happen here.  Our main character is a rebel and a troublemaker but what she does doesn’t amount to a lot of badass shit.  She mostly sneaks around and yells at people.  I liked the look of the ghost/monster though.  It reminded me of something Sam Raimi would cook up.

I want to say that this is just a stepping stone for John.  That he needed to do a simple movie like this to get back into the directing mindset.  Hopefully he had a good time making it and that it gave him a good warm up so he can get back to business and make something that really kicks ass.

Side note: Even though the soundtrack was Carpenter-esque-ly minimal it wasn’t the usual synth sound that we all know and love.  It felt very stock.  But he did throw in “Run Baby Run” which is an awesome song.  Joe Melson is a fucking great songwriter.