By Joe Bendel. To be young and crazy in the 1960s only meant one thing: prepare yourself for some generous helpings of electro-shock treatment. Unfortunately, the beautiful and institutionalized Kristen has even greater problems in John Carpenter’s The Ward, which is now available on DVD.
After burning down a remote farmhouse while mysteriously decked out in her night-gown, Kristen is delivered into the care of Dr. Stringer. He does not seem like a bad fellow, but his nurse is evidently still out of sorts from all the trouble she had with that McMurphy character. Yet, despite their aggressive battery of pharmaceuticals, Kristen is often left unattended with the other four young women in her ward.
Iris, an artist, is initially the most welcoming of the group. Emily is the assertive one, often assuming the role of protector for Zoey, who seems to suffer from an acute case of arrested development. Conversely, Sarah, the catty sexpot, specializes in generating bad vibes. It would all be like a CW show in an insane asylum, except that the spirit of a former patient is apparently trying to kill them all.
Just about every horror movie fan wants the new John Carpenter film to be a triumphant return to form. As a result, there is a temptation to forgive a lot in The Ward. Truthfully, though, it is just a serviceable genre picture at best that relies far too heavily on scares derived from stuff sneaking up behind character and going boo, rather than genuinely tapping into the fear of the unknown. Even the spooky old nut house is not all that memorable, particularly when compared to that of the Vicious Brothers’ Grave Encounters.
To its credit, the cast is fairly game. Though not a scream queen in the Carpenter-Jaime Lee Curtis tradition, Amber Heard is quite credible as the take-charge Kristen, which is essential a given where the film is headed. Jared Harris is not exactly Peter Cushing either, but he is still pretty good as Dr. Stringer, projecting an ethically ambiguous erudition appropriate to the genre.
Though it is reasonably well executed, the big twist might frustrate genre fans as well, because we have seen it before in films of relatively recent vintage. (Here’s a hint: in one such movie Alfred Molina played the head-shrinker.) However, the biggest disappointment of The Ward is the absence of that unquantifiable but instantly recognizable eerie atmosphere that permeates the classic Carpenter canon. Judged on its own merits, The Ward is a mediocre to sort-of okay b-movie, with some featured performances arguably exceeding the industry standard. Yet compared to They Live, The Thing, the original Halloween, and even Prince of Darkness, it is rather watery beer, but fans can still check it on DVD.
In established horror movie tradition, Mary Kee’s threatening calls are coming from inside her own apartment. The ‘from thirty years in the past’ thing is a neat trick, though. While never explained, viewers should just go with the cosmically crossed line set-up if they can find Matthew Parkhill’s The Caller (trailer here), which opened this past Friday.
In the process of divorcing her abusive stalker husband, Kee needed a new apartment, fast. What she found was a seedy but spacious pad in a building with an endearingly lazy super and a dark past. As soon as she moves in, an unstable older woman starts calling Kee’s landline looking for her boyfriend, Bobby. In addition to her galloping jealousy, the voice calling herself Rose Lazar seems to think the year is 1979. Although that is obviously crazy talk, it appears Lazar is in fact causing things to happen in the past to mess with Kee in the future.
Fixated on Kee, Lazar turns homicidal, starting with deadbeat Bobby, allowing her to assume the fateful apartment. However, Kee’s prospective new lover, John Guidi, is convinced it is somehow all part of her ex’s sick schemes. Still, as a math professor and Trekker, he very considerately supplies the film’s underlying theory of time distortion.
Time travel broadly defined is like the great white whale of genre filmmakers, who more often than not only end up with a blender full of narrative mush. However, if you buy into the basic premise, the internal logic of Sergio Casci’s screenplay holds up rather well. Matthew Parkhill, a Sundance alumnus with Dot the I, also steadily cranks up the tension quite adroitly, balancing Lazar’s supernatural menace with the very real and present danger represented by her ex-husband. Frankly, this is a surprisingly scary film.
Considering The Caller also boasts cast members of Twilight and True Blood, it is something of a puzzler that it is not opening wider this Friday. Rachelle Lefevre from the Stephenie Meyer franchise is quite convincing and grounded as the time-tormented Carol Kane, establishing some pleasant romantic chemistry with Stephen Moyer, probably best known for the Charlaine Harris series (though he does not look very Italian as the first generation Guidi). As a further genre bonus, cult actor Luis Guzmán (Carlito’s Way, etc.) also appears as George, the super who knows too much.
Of course, The Caller cannot withstand rigorous logical scrutiny, but such pedantry would prevent viewers from enjoying a wicked little horror-thriller. The Puerto Rican locations, though not intrinsic to the story, also add atmosphere and texture to the proceedings. It might be relatively unheralded, but this is a seriously creepy film, definitely recommended.
Posted on August 25th, 2011 at 12:14pm.