The Ward

John Carpenter – 2011 – USA

An unspeakable disappointment from one of the last real auteurs, John Carpenter.  The prospect of a new Carpenter film after a break of nearly ten years should have been a great event in the film community (as much as such a thing exists).  But in place of a lion’s roar, we have a sickly whimper.  Having said that, the film is actually not bad, and if it were directed by anyone else, I’d politely say that it showed promise.  Indeed, thankfully absent are most of the dank and muddled techniques of current horror fare; and the production design is consistent with Carpenter’s long-held belief in vivid, almost comic-book-like lucidity.  However, the film suffers disastrously from what I can only assume is Carpenter’s total dearth of passion for filmmaking.  If Carpenter’s name were removed from the credits, we would have absolutely no idea who had directed it; and this is the worst possible criticism I can make about someone of Carpenter’s stature, someone who at one time was a famous devotee of (and heir-apparent to) the Pure Cinema ideals of giants like Hawks and Hitchcock.  On the depressing DVD commentary, a fatigued and unapologetic Carpenter all but admits that age and career frustration have landed him in a situation where he is basically phoning it in.  Personally, I’d prefer that he hadn’t bothered, for this is not a true Carpenter film, but merely a lightweight and undistinguished property – (in the vein of Scorsese’s Shutter Island and all of M. Night Shayamalan’s output) – that he was hired to direct, obviously on the hope that the memory of his great masterpieces would bring in a handful of ticket-buyers; the memory of films like Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978) and Escape from New York (1981).