I saw John Carpenter’s The Ward in Toronto last year and can satisfactorily say it is quite terrible. To quote my review, it’s “a subpar psych ward thriller that mines the most cliche of horror film plotlines with laughable performances by the entire cast of twenty-something actresses.” However, that didn’t stop ARC Entertainment from finding one review to quote on their poster as they must be seriously hard up for something to distribute to agree to take on this mess.
Set in 1966, the film stars Amber Heard (Drive Angry) as Kristen a girl who was just picked up by the police for torching a local barn. She is thus committed to North Bend Psychiatric where she is instantly haunted by the ghost of a former patient. Jump scares happen, mirror scares are a constant and horror hounds are expected to ignore how mundane it all is as Carpenter lathers on the gore.
While the film can boast about having not only Heard, but also Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th) and even Meryl Streep’s daughter, Mamie Gummer, as members of the cast, but it still has to contend with the problem that all of them give terrible performances. It is, however, hard to blame them too much considering this is one bad movie.
ARC is set to release the film on a limited basis beginning July 8, but I don’t expect it to make it too far across the country and would imagine it will be available On Demand around the same time. So check out the trailer below if you’re still intrigued and tell me how much you love the 16-second Xlrator Media company logo at the beginning. Seriously, 16 seconds for a company logo? Isn’t that over-doing it?
