WARD, THE

During the late 90s & early 00's John Carpenter's reign as a master of horror dwindled rapidly. Once making classic films like Halloween, The Thing and Escape From New York... the tail end of his career wasn't so impressive with mediocre fluff like Village Of The Damned, Vampires & Ghosts Of Mars. And then he retired. After several years of obscurity he resurfaced for a couple of episodes of "Masters Of Horror" and fans got a taste of the old maestro again. And now comes The Ward, his first feature in over 10 years. And what a welcome return it is! This movie is the stuff of nightmares. It takes place in a lunatic asylum during the 60s. A new girl is admitted to 'the ward' where the patients are isolated and under strict observation. There's a ghostly presence residing with them (hello, its a lunatic asylum) and this is the basis for what ensues. The story seems typical and it could have been a tedious genre movie, but Carpenter brings back his back-to-basics approach which has been absent from his work for eons. He handles the material brilliantly and The Ward is the best mental-asylum horror movie I've seen since Session 9.

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