A young girl in hospital garbs frantically runs through a southern forest to a decrepit old house which she promptly burns to the ground. She is then picked up by the local authorities and returned to the high risk psychiatric ward where she has to deal with the unfriendly staff and patients as well as ominous ghostly visions which continually haunt her. Now with the help of a caring yet suspicious doctor, she tries to figure out the dark secret behind her institutionalization. Watching a film as inept as "The Ward", one finds it hard to believe it was directed by "master of terror" John Carpenter who has directed such revered horror outings as "Halloween" and "The Thing". This film generates no concern for its heroine, which is vital to a film like this, and employs a plot device which came as unexpected, not out of cleverness, but because it had been done before so inanely that I did not think anyone would be stupid enough to employ. it again. Hence, it comes off atrociously and this film becomes not only a miss for Carpenter but a putrid waste of 90 minutes.
