Review of The Ward (2010)

Hello all! Today I wanted to incorporate my idea for Wednesdays: Wild Card Wednesdays! Sometimes, if I can't find a comedy to review for Wednesdays, I'll just post reviews of, basically, whatever I want. So without further ado, I'll be reviewing "The Ward," directed by John Carpenter!

"The Ward" is about a troubled young woman named Kristen who is admitted to a local mental hospital. During her stay, she is haunted by a mysterious entity, but when she tries to discuss it with the other patients and doctors, she is met with little to no help. Suspecting that the orderlies are not telling her the whole truth, she decides to solve the mystery of the entity on her own, and discovers that it goes deeper than she could have imagined.

Pros:

1.  The ghost, entity, or what have you, was really creepy. John Carpenter really knows how to set up a good scare, and this movie is no exception. There are a little too many jump-out-at-the-audience parts, but they're just too well set up for me to complain too much. What's also scary to me is what you don't see, and this movie leaves a lot to the imagination, and boy can your imagination go to some dark places.

Look out, crazy girl!

2. Okay guys, before I get to the cons, I have to say that the ending is almost worth the hour and a half. I genuinely did not see the twist ending coming, and when it did, I was so glad it went in the direction it did. However, as you will see from the cons, it wasn't the greatest movie up until then, and not the greatest execution of a twist ending.

SO. Here we go with the cons:

1. The only indication you get that she's in a mental hospital is the fact that there are orderlies and doctors present. The other four patients (who are also young women) were dressed in normal clothes and pretty much had the run of the place for the entire movie. That and there aren't any other patients in the whole place. That kind of took me out of the movie a little bit; took a little bit of the vital craziness away.

2. When you get a good look at the ghost, she just looks silly. She's super creepy when you only get a quick glance at her, but toward the end of the movie you get to look at her dead on, and she looks like the make up people just sent her to a Slipknot concert for a few hours and told her not to shower when she got back. She looks like a teenage metal head with really bad acne and sunken eyes, basically. In their defense, they're not all dead-on shots, but still. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

3. The twist ending makes the watcher think twice about what's real; it makes the watcher wonder if the mental hospital is real, or just made up in the mind of Kristen. Does Kristen even exist? However, in the case of this movie, the fact that you can't quite figure it out makes the movie more confusing. I wasn't sure what was supposed to be really happening and what was supposed to be a metaphor. 

All in all, there isn't really much to say about this one. It isn't John Carpenter's best, but I wouldn't say that it's a terrible horror film. It had plenty of scares, but it just never came to life. John Carpenter started his career off with a bang, but unfortunately his films have been going downhill ever since. Sorry, Mr. Carpenter, I'd have to give this one two and a half stars. Thanks for reading!