Synopsis
Kristen, a troubled young woman, is captured by the police after burning down a farmhouse and is locked in the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. Soon, she begins to suspect that the place has a dark secret at its core and she's determined to find out what it is.
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Cast
- Amber HeardKristen
- Mamie GummerEmily
- Danielle PanabakerSarah
- Jared HarrisDr. Stringer
- Laura-LeighZoey
- Lyndsy FonsecaIris
- Mika BooremAlice Hudson
- Sydney SweeneyYoung Alice Hudson
- D.R. AndersonRoy
- Susanna BurneyNurse Lundt
Recommendations
- 70
The Hollywood Reporter
While by no means a masterpiece of the form, John Carpenter's The Ward is an economical period piece that still effectively demonstrates what a skilled technician can accomplish in a single location with a compact cast and sturdy old-school effects. - 70
Village Voice
Carpenter does what he's always done well here: individualizing shorthand personalities in a group under siege. This is Carpenter's first all-female ensemble, and the inmates are uniformly well-played. - 67
Entertainment Weekly
At least Carpenter the spook-meister knows how to goose you. - 63
Slant Magazine
Its ostentatious sense of horror -- think later-day Argento -- is far from suggestive, though some of its queasier moments effectively tap into our fears of not-so-bygone forms of invasive physical therapy. - 60
Variety
Fans excited to see John Carpenter back in bigscreen action after nine years' absence will find limited cause for joy in The Ward, a horror opus that briskly -- maybe too briskly -- charts ghostly doings at a nuthouse. - 42
The A.V. Club
Nothing about The Ward's script or direction has much snap. The dialogue is never witty, the characters are indistinct, the story is set in 1966 for no relevant reason, and the scares are strictly of the "thing jumps loudly out of the shadows" variety. - 40
Boxoffice Magazine
Typically, Carpenter thrives on modestly budgeted films like The Ward, but this one comes off as an amateurish misstep due to unoriginal storytelling from fledgling screenwriters Michael and Shawn Rasmussen. - 33
IndieWire
The Ward succeeds mainly as a checklist that keeps it consistent with Carpenter's nearly forty years of work. It has none of the smart genre appeal that put him on the map, instead resembling a desperate knock-off by someone with far less talent. Carpenter either lost his groove or the will to use it.
