The Ward (2010)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2010
	Director: John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing)
	Actors: Amber Heard (Zombieland), Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Jared Harris (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 21.12.2012, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Kristen (Heard) is sent to the psychiatric ward of an hospital after having burned down an old farm. She will start to make friends with the other innmates, and discover that some kind of entity haunts the place.
Review: The latest movie by one of my favorite directors John Carpenter (I own all his movies), who has been absent since Ghosts of Mars in 2001, except for two episodes of the TV-series Masters of Horror. The topic fits him well, but it has been done before. I cannot really tell which other movies this one reminds me of without spoiling the ending. I enjoyed as usual Carpenter's art of moviemaking: slow pace, beautiful use of the cinemascope format, nice presentation of some good-looking actresses. I also liked the opening credits sequence (that you fully understand only at the end) and I found the soundtrack very good in the first half hour, reminding me of the one of Drive. But the last hour contains less and less ideas, and in the end I realized it is pretty much a copy of another movie, only transposed in a ward and with an all-female cast. One detail at the end makes me think that the copy is intentional, making it an hommage then. SPOILER: Highlight the following to know which movie it is a copy of, and the main twist: Identity (2003), multiple personalities.
Rating: 6 /10