The Ward

I like being able to watch a movie and get the feeling that it has limitless possibilities. I don’t expect every movie to be *****. If it were, then excellence, as a concept, would be worthless. You need the occasional average and sub-average experiences to make the great movies stand out. But if given the choice between a movie that has possibilities and fails to capitalize on them and a movie with an obvious built-in ceiling, I’m gonna take the former. At least it’s trying to do something. A movie that says “my C game is good enough” … well … what can you do with that beyond reply with "yup, you sure aimed for the middle". That, in a nutshell, is The Ward. It's never outright bad. It’s perfectly watchable. I’m not sure that the actresses were slotted in the right roles — Amber Heard as the feisty troublemaker, Danielle Panabaker as the seductress, and Lyndsy Fonseca as the cute artist feels almost like trolling — but it doesn’t detail the proceedings. Everyone does a fine job in front of and behind the camera. It’s fine. If you’re a horror fan, you’ve seen it before, and I mean that in an almost literal sense; I don’t know that there’s an original beat in this whole movie. But it’s all done fine enough. But that knife cuts both ways. It is exactly what you think it is and nothing more, and it has no intention of trying to be. It says at the output “I’m a boilerplate 6 out of 10 movie, deal with it”. If you can deal with a movie okay with being okay, then you’ll be fine with The Ward. But if you’re hoping for it to try, or you’re hoping the JOHN CARPENTER name that’s part of the title card will somehow will this thing into excellence, you are sorely mistaken. This is an Applebee’s pasta dish, a pair of store brand sneakers, the color beige, and the music of Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett left but before Dark Side Of The Moon. It is just fine, for good and ill.