The Ward
Starring: Amber Heard. Danielle Panabaker, Mamie Gummer, Lyndsay Fonseca, Laura Leigh, Jared Harris
Director: John Carpenter
Rating: 2.5/5
It was Ghosts of Mars back in 2001 when John Carpenter last helmed a movie - but The Ward marked his return this year.
Kristen, a beautiful but troubled young woman, finds herself bruised, cut, drugged, and held against her will in a remote ward of a Psychiatric Hospital.
She is completely disoriented, with no idea why she was brought to this place and no memory of her life before being admitted. All she knows is that she isn't safe.
The other patients in the ward, four equally disturbed young women, offer no answers, and Kristen quickly realizes things are not as they seem.
The air is heavy with secrets, and at night, when the hospital is dark and foreboding, she hears strange and frightening sounds. It appears they are not alone.
One-by-one the other girls begin to disappear and Kristen must find a way out of this hellish place before she, too, becomes a victim.
John Carpenter really is a true great when it comes to horror movies but sadly The Ward pales in comparison to anything that he has produced in the past.
It's by no means a truly terrible movie we have just come to expect so much more then Carpenter's named is linked with a film.
The major problem with this movie if the fear element is missing it is just void of any tension of fear there is no atmosphere at all.
Amber Heard does her best with the script that she was given, which mainly meant her running screaming, crying for people to believe her and being drugged; nothing that stretched her too much.
The movie does move at a quickish pace but there is just something so familiar about the plot and the characters; we really have seen all of this before.
Granted The Ward did produce a twist that I wasn't expecting but by the time the truth was revealed I have to admit I was more than a little bored.
Having spent nearly a decade out of the director's chair you would have hoped that Carpenter would have returned with more of a bang than this - real fans of the filmmaker will be disappointed by this offering.
The Ward is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw