John Carpenter's The Ward (2010)

Okay, so far we've reviewed films with creatures and vampires. Let's move on to the delicate subject of ghosts. I say delicate 'cause I can count with one hand the movies that I consider good involving ghosts or hauntings. I decided to give The Ward a try because, well, it's John Carpenter and I'm a huge fan of 1982's The Thing. Big time.

The story is dated somewhere around the early sixties. It starts with this little lady in her pijamas running wild and burning down houses. She's found by police officers who immediately take her to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. We're talking about Kristen, who's brought to life by Amber Heard. Here's the first boo for this film: the girl can't act for shit. I mean, I know she kind of starred Drive Angry, but come on, the movie is so cheap you don't even care if the actors actually act. But an actress that can't act for shit is definitely not what you want as a star in a psychological thriller.

"Oh, how I wish I could act!"

So, we're stuck with bad acting right from the beginning. But, hey, maybe the story will be good enough to see beyond cheesy faces, right? Wrong. We've all seen it before. Once in the psychiatric ward, Kristen meets the rest of the girls of the loon house. We have Emily the chain-smoker batshit moron, Sarah the vain and slutty-ish, Zoey the five-year-old and Iris the artist. Fun. The idea of having these bland excuse of characters being haunted and hunted by a mischievous girl ghost (Alice) was what kept me watching at this point. You won't let me lie about the fact that if the characters are not enjoyable, at least their horrid deaths will be.

BLOODY HELL YES!

Wrong again. There's nothing fun or enjoyable in the way these chicks die. Alice appears every now and then to take a girl into the lobotomy or electroshock room and play with the tools in there... in the most boring way possible. And as it is obvious already, nobody believes these poor batshit women about the ghost, so the only option is to break out.

But Alice catches up with them, as expected. I would tell you more about the reason of this hostile apparition, but I wouldn't want to ruin the first twenty minutes of the film in which you'll be able to tell for yourself. You'll go through and hour and such of eternal boredom to be kicked right in the face with one of the most expected and shitty plot twists I have ever seen. I bet the whole production thought they'd be so cool to enlighten us with their twist. Maybe they even thought they'd made cult material. Honestly, I would've rather been attacked by flesh-eating ants for and hour and a half than watched this piece of shit.

Don't be angry, Amber.

What to expect?

Bad script, even worse acting, a shit ton of crossfades & self-loathing for actually giving this film a chance.

Hellnation's Rating: 2/10