Run Baby Run

THE WARD (2010)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is no doubt that a horror movie about a mental ward facility has been done before. Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor" is the most horrific and scariest example, along with a semi-remake of sorts, "Shutter Island" (though the latter is based on an equally creepy novel). Novel twist endings at such wards are not an uncommon practice - we have seen them before and can predict them with ease. So can director John Carpenter make it sing, or sink? He makes it sing. "The Ward" is an elegant, frightful horror flick done with the brio of a real master, and among Carpenter's best films since "In the Mouth of Madness."

Amber Heard is a traumatized woman running away from something, though we are not sure what. She burns down a farmhouse in the opening scene where something clearly traumatic had occurred there.  Cut to North Bend Psychiatric Hospital where Heard, playing a woman named Kristen, is held in a mental ward along with four other troubled girls. Kristen doesn't want to be at the loony bin (pardon the parlance) but then again, what mental patient doesn't say such things?  The other girls who hope to be promptly released include: Iris (Lyndsy Fonseca), a sketch artist; Zoey (Laura-Leigh), a near-mute who clutches a stuffed doll and suffers from arrested development;  Emily (Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter), the toughie who taunts the others, and Sarah (Danielle Panabaker) who tries to woo one of the orderlies. All of them seem to come out of the 60's period though more modern Amber Heard look a little out of place, or maybe that is the idea. Rounding out the rest of the hospital's small staff includes Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris), who tries to help his patients yet is not above providing shock treatment (remember, this film is set in 1966). Oh, and there is a Nurse Ratched as well, but she is hardly as wretched.

Some may see "The Ward" as "Identity" crossed with "Girl, Interrupted" spiked with an extra touch of malice. I see it as John Carpenter's return to form, providing us with a dank, almost forbidden sense of atmosphere and a few well-executed scares that really come out of nowhere. Most important is that Carpenter and writers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen makes us care for all the female patients - we cling to them and hope that Kristen, in particular, gets away. "The Ward" also throws in moments that toy with us a little, like the girls dancing to the Newbeats' "Run, Baby, Run." The movie, though not as wholly original or as striking in its visual design as "Shock Corridor" or "Shutter Island," is a welcome return to horror that is neither geeky nor full of grisly, gratuitous gore. Instead, it will make your skin crawl.