How John Carpenter went from The Thing, Escape From New York and They Live, to this very average, at times boring and badly cut mess, I will never know.
The story is pretty muddled, with it about one thing once, then about something else the next, before it has a barmy twist at the end.
The cast try their best(lead Amber Heard, as well as Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Lyndsy Fonseca and Jared Harris), but the acting does verge into camp and wooden at times, and no one ever grips me.
The actual horror sucks IMO. Not once does it ever really scare me, and it always resorts to the dreaded cheap jump scare too many times. You can see any jump a mile off(character looks out at corridor or through a window, and BAMN there is the person waiting to pounce. Its so yawn inducing). Its a shame John has resorted to cheap scares, especially after he pulled off real skin crawling terror in his 80s heyday, without using loud jump scares.
Another thing that sucked was the girl ghost thing. I am not kidding, she was the most naff ghost I have ever seen, and after countless times she appears and not once scares me, I just thought God she is sooo boring. The Grady Twins she ain't believe me.
One more thing that irritated was the poor edit and the cuts that made The Ward feel like a made for tv horror feature or a feature length version of American Horror Story, certainly not a cinematic movie.
The early parts was a great start and interesting, plus the setting of a mental institution is always a creepy setting, and its not a woeful movie that compares with the worst ever.
But as its from such a talented man like John Carpenter, its a pretty poor effort from him, and stands as the worst of his I have seen so far(yes even worse than Ghosts Of Mars).
Review of The Ward
