There is possibly a syntactical issue with the above title but this is a John Carpenter film and therefore bears his mark. As with most of Carpenter’s previous films his name is front and centre to ensure audiences know what to expect and to get excited about this being the next John Carpenter flick.

The problem with this ‘brand’ confidence though is that the last John Carpenter feature film was Ghosts of Mars in 2001 and this met with poor reviews and took only around half the film’s production budget in worldwide grosses. So, is this Carpenter’s comeback? Well perhaps not quite a triumphant comeback but The Ward is an enjoyable and well crafted horror film that does a lot to take away the bad taste left in one’s mouth by Ghosts of Mars.

The film begins with the torching of a house by the film’s lead character Kristen (Amber Heard) who is then quickly thrown into a mental hospital. The film is set in America in the 60s so the mental hospital is strict and more like a prison than a caring place for mental healing. Run by Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris) the hospital has a special ward populated by a handful of young women and this is where our lead is immediately thrown into.

Stringer seems to be focused on some sort of unique ‘cure’ with this ward and the young women are kept separate from the rest of the hospital. As Kristen gets to know the group she begins to uncover a secret at the heart of the ward and along the way the women begin disappearing.

The film is a pacey and taut 88 minutes and Carpenter does an excellent job of filling the film with a variety of effective, suspenseful scares, aided by effects work from Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero. The setting of a mental hospital provides a great location for a horror film and Carpenter plays on this with the use of the claustrophobia inherent and also the various means with which the characters can be tortured.

Particularly gruesome is the electroshock therapy that provides the opportunity for more than one toe-curling sequence. Carpenter is also reliable when it comes to effective jump scares, never falling into the current trend of a loud moment in the score followed by nothing remotely scary. Carpenter follows through on his jump scares. That’s not to say that the score isn’t aggressively invasive at times and it unfortunately lets the film down in a lot of scenes.

Carpenter’s expert crafting is obvious in The Ward though and for the most part it is an entirely rewarding experience, an entertaining story told with skill. Whilst the score occasionally has a negative impact and the performances are a little uneven the positives far outweigh these minor issues.

Originally scheduled for release earlier this year, the UK home entertainment release of The Ward was pulled once it was discovered that the aspect ratio was incorrect. This has been corrected, restoring Carpenter’s considered compositions, and the transfer on this Blu-ray is fantastic and a good representation of the film I saw theatrically earlier this year.

The Blu-ray special features are comprised of three interview segments with John Carpenter, ‘the cast’ and the producers and production designers. The Carpenter segment is the most underwhelming as it is only three minutes long and as someone who has supplied some of the best commentaries (see The Thing and They Live for instance) it’s disappointing not to hear much more from him. The remainder of the interviews are of similar length, per person, and are a little light on any depth but do provide a reasonably insight into the atmosphere on set.

John Carpenter’s The Ward is available to buy or rent on Blu-ray from the 17th of October.

Film ***½~ (3.5/5)

Blu-ray ***~~ (3/5)

After an almost ten year absence from directing feature films, John Carpenter is back with The Ward. The film is a mental hospital set horror starring Amber Heard, Lyndsy Fonseca, Jared Harris, Danielle Panabaker and Mika Boorem and it’s really rather good.

I was lucky enough to speak to John Carpenter earlier this year (bear this in mind for the section in which he talks about present/future projects) and you can read the fruits of this interview below. We covered a variety of topics including The Ward, Horror films, monster movies and much more. He also shared with me some very brief but details on the film project he’s currently working on.

Why did you decide to return from a break in directing features with The Ward and what were your reasons for taking the break?

I stopped in 2001 and I was seriously considering not making movies again. They were too hard, they weren’t fun. I think that my last film tanked didn’t help things at all. So I thought, I don’t know, maybe it’s time to quit. Then in 2006 Mick Garris came to me with this Masters of Horror idea. So he conned all of us into going up to Vancuver and shooting an hour television episode and we’d have complete creative control. Anyway, I went up there and it was a lot of fun. I had a real good time directing again. I thought, hell this is so good maybe I’ll give it a try again. The Ward came and along and it was the perfect choice to come back from being away from directing; It was a limited budget, a limited location, a few actors – very very talented actresses I worked with – and so I had a great time.

I thought the whole notion of it was pretty interesting and it was a chance to do something different, I hadn’t really worked with an all girl movie in a long time. It was just a lot of fun. And there was a lot of mood to the film and I thought I could bring something to that.

You’ve talked previously about directing large groups, on the commentaries for The Thing and The Thing From Another World. What was it like getting the opportunity to do it again here?

Originally when I was younger and making films that kind of thing scared me, having all those actors in one thing scared me very much but I got used to it and began to understand actors a lot more. Now, it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. The dynamics of a scene can change and you see things you haven’t seen before. And if you get really good actors that’s your ticket to success.

What was it like working with the young cast of women?

It just reminds you over and over again, you forget sometimes, just how accomplished actors and actresses are and of all different ages. My cast really brought it every day to the set and boy they’re great. I love working with them. And it’s nice to have pretty girls on set every day. It doesn’t hurt ya.

Did you intend for audiences to piece together the true nature of the plot of The Ward before the end?

There are plenty of clues as to what’s going on but they’re very subtle so you wouldn’t necessarily catch it. I also didn’t want to give away too much. But we were all thinking about, how much does the audience know here, how much should the audience know here about what’s going on here.

How did you decide on Mark Kilian for the soundtrack?

Enormous talent was the first thing. I decided early on, well I decided a few years ago that I don’t think I’m going to do the scores any more. They’re just too hard to do. You get so burned out after directing and editing and then you step into the recording studio and it’s like eurgh no please save me. So I met a lot of composers and Mark was just talented and he read a script and he wrote some music based on what he read and it was just great. I love working with him, he’s a really talented man.

What do you find so appealing about Horror and what do you think is the key to it succeeding?

Horror has been around since the beginning of cinema, since the silent era it’s been around, and it keeps evolving with the times and it plays around the world. In other worlds, a comedy might not play as well in the United Kingdom as it does in the United States. But a Horror movie plays everywhere because the emotions invlved are universal, they’re worldwide. We’re all afraid, we’re all essentially afraid of the same things, we share fears. It unifies us [chuckles], it’s an odd thing but it’s true. In that sense it’s a kind of classical genre that goes beyond boundaries and is adaptable to changing times. There’s nothing bad to say about it.

Do you think more basic, primal fears work better in Horror films?

The loss of identity is a fear that humans have. It is a slightly more sophisticated fear than the creature’s going to come out of the dark and get me, which seems to be a holdover from when we were coming out of the trees. But loss of identity or questions of identity is all fertile ground and this was just fun to do because it played around with a lot of things… I mean, I don’t know, you go by your instincts after a while because that’s all you have and that’s what I did in this case.

What scares you in Horror films?

It’s all about what scared me as a kid. The most vivid memories, the most fondest memories you have of things like music and movies all comes from when you are young and open-minded. you get a little cynical as you get older and you say, no I don’t believe that could happen. But when I was young during the fifties there were a lot of monster movies, monsters from outer space and they were just fabulous, just wonderful. I just loved those movies. And there were a lot of fears of obvious things at the time, there were cold war fears, there were fears of what radiation would do to us, what it would cause in humans if we were exposed to it. Listen man, a lot of that stuff is still true. There may not be giant bugs crawling around attacking us but some pretty horrendous things happen. So it was all those things and I loved those movies. And I did my share of jumping and screaming when I was young.

Would you ever consider making a big monster movie yourself?

I would if they asked me. I’d love to make a Godzilla movie.

I understand you also love westerns. Have you got any plans to make any westerns in the future?

I’m working on a Gothic Western right now. An odd gothic western, an interesting subject matter. We’ll see if we can get it made. These are interesting different times in the movie business these days. And I’m an old-timer, who wants to see a movie by me.

(He was reluctant to give away too much as he is currently working on this film but he also described it as follows.)

…True Grit spliced together with Silence of the Lambs. How’s that?

Is there anything else you’re working on at the moment?

I’m also working on a comic book, which is very interesting. We’ll see if we can set it up. A couple of other things. Right now I’m focused like a laser on the NBA playoffs here in America. Extremely important to me.

You’ve been working on Fear 3 too, right? How are you involved in that?

A friend of mine is a comic book writer, Steve Niles, and he and I have worked on a movie project that never came to fruition ut we had a good time together. He got the gig to work on the script for Fear 3 and he said how would you like to work on it and I said that sounds great. Games are basically scripted out in great detail, about which level and what happens and what the story is. In between the gameplay there’s a lot of cut scenes, where the plot gets discussed, the characters get discussed. We worked on those, we worked on the dialogue primarily.

What’s your starting point with scripts?

It’s always about story first. Always, what’s your story, what’s it about. Then you start dealing with who are the characters, what are the conflicts. Just basic storytelling frankly. I haven’t written my own scripts in a long time because a) I’m lazy and b) other talented people are doing it. That’s it though, you start with a story. What if New York was a prison and we had a character that went in there. Then you start dealing with the other issues.

What’s your process like when writing scripts?

Coffee, cigarettes and a lot of concentration. It’s brutal, you’re a writer, it can be brutal. That’s how I do it.

What’s the importance to you of the ”John Carpenter’s…’ title for your films?

I did that back on Halloween because I though two things. One was it would identify me with the movie so I would become known as a director and I would have a career and survive and pay bills. And there was a popular thing going on in the sixties and seventies, A Film By…, and I thought that’s real pretentious because it’s a film by a whole lot of people. It’s not just one guy up there baking a cake. There’s a lot of people working very hard on a movie. So it was choice I made.

Which of your films do you have the most fondness for?

There’s a lot of them that I hold a lot of fondness for. I tend to think about what was going on in my life during the time I was making a movie. So it’s not simply just the story. Some more than others. there are some I like more than others. I’m just happy when I’m finished with them, I don’t have to think too much about them any more.

What about Lovecraft interests you so much?

I’d love to do a real Lovecraft story. He’s sort of an acknowledged early master of Horror and Science Fiction. His whole story of the things, old ones, the elders are coming back to get us. It’s just right stuff. I really enjoyed his Science Fiction stories a lot. Some of his writing, you have to cultivate a taste for it because he can be a bit much but I love H.P. Lovecraft.

How do you decide on particular technical approaches in your films?

It all depends on the story and that’s where what techniques you use come from the story. It really depends on what the story requires. There isn’t like one template for making a Horror movie or science fiction movie, it depends on what the movie’s about. Let that be your guide and it will never fail you. That’s what I always do. It’s always about the story.

The Ward is released on DVD and Blu-ray on the 17th of October and you can read my review of the Blu-ray here soon.

THE WARD creeps onto Blu-ray and DVD on 16 May and marks the return of legendary Godfather of slasher horror John Carpenter after nearly a decade and evokes the classic finely crafted horror of Halloween and Village of the Damned. Pre-order yourself a copy here to be one of the first to enjoy John Carpenter’s chilling return.

Set in a Psychiatric Hospital, this bone-chilling horror stars Amber Heard as Kristen (Drive Angry 3D) and Jared Harris as Dr Stringer (Mad Men) and delivers on jumps and scares aplenty.

Kristen (Amber Heard) finds herself committed to The Ward, with no recollection of previous events. Imprisoned in this terrifying asylum alongside a group of erratically behaved young women, Kristen not only faces overbearing wardens during the day but by night a savage ghostly figure stalks the ward hallway for her next victim to swallow into the darkness.

To celebrate the release of THE WARD, we’re giving you the chance to win the ultimate horror collection including iconic greats, The Shining, Poltergist, The Excorsits and Friday the 13th together with The Ward all on Blu-ray. For your chance of winning just answer the following question using the form below:

John Carpenter was the director of which of the following legendary Horror films?

1. Halloween
2. Scream
3. Nosferatu

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

The small print:

• Open to UK residents only
• Only one entry per household will be counted
• The competition will close 16th May 23.59 GMT
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

© 2011 Warner Bros. Ent. All Rights Reserved

Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) has landed the lead female role in The Hunger Games.

Lawrence triumphed over fellow actresses Chloe Moretz (Let Me In), Lyndsy Fonseca (Kick-Ass), Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), Emma Roberts (Scream 4), Kaya Scodelario (Moon) and Emily Browning (Sucker Punch), who were all reported to be under consideration.

The Hunger Games, an adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ young-adult science fiction novel, centers on a young girl (Lawrence) who joins a survival contest in order to save her community in a dystopian future.

Gary Ross (Seabiscuit) is attached to direct the film, which is scheduled to hit cinema screens on March 23, 2012.

Alex Pettyfer (I Am Number Four), Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are All Right) and Hunter Parish (Weeds) are all said to be under consideration for the role of Peeta Mellark.

Lawrence will next be seen in X-Men: First Class and The Beaver, both scheduled to open in the UK over the lucrative Summer period.

Source: THR

After a ten-year absence, John’s Carpenter’s return to feature films with The Ward is one of two exciting releases this week, including the 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi’s controversial I Spit On Your Grave. Both thrillers go head to head, but both offer a horror helping of differing proportions and for different fan bases.

After Carpenter’s last and uninspiring Ghosts of Mars in 2001, there is some intrepidation about watching a glossier Noughties offering, considering his former masterpieces have a gritty and nostalgic B-movie quality to them, including Christine, The Thing, and the film that still makes fog scary, The Fog in 1980. The Ward has a noticeably different aesthetic quality to it, more polished and more aware of the tastes of the modern audience.

That said The Ward remains true to good old-fashioned horror roots, with long, vortex-styled corridor shots, creepy dark shadows and flesh-rotting ghouls. It also has a graceful, celestial and remote feeling to it, resembling a cross between the open-panned spaces of the sinister Overlook Hotel in The Shining and the soulless wards of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. As a Carpenter comeback it doesn’t lose the shadowy suspense and all-important timing of his previous hits, but is far slicker and may surprise some fans.

Amber Heard plays a young woman who is institutionalised and becomes terrorised by a ghost called Alice. Heard of Mandy Lane fame is fast-becoming our favourite pin-up horror girl. Highly watchable and full of earnest curiosity and fighting spirit, she has an instant leading lady quality that needs tapping into more. Although The Ward is a safe bet, Heard’s talents are screaming out to be put to better use in a meatier psychological affair, to elevate her out of the teen horror cliché she’s becoming too comfortable in.

Nevertheless, The Ward never has a dull moment, with some decent jump-out-of-your-skin cheap scares, emotionless authority, and some thoughtful twists that merely showcase its film-maker’s expertise and patience at letting the elements play out to the big reveal. It even has a titillating shower scene – a cinematic must when a bunch of nubile and attractive young girls are present. It’s a tired cliché that’s quickly forgiven as Carpenter’s at the helm who helped established these clichés years before.

The evil entity that lurks in wait to kill The Ward’s residents would be more effective, if its physical identity had not been revealed so soon – like the demonic misty figure on CCTV in The Ring. In fact, judging by the success of the Paranormal Activity films, less is more. Sadly, the ghoul in The Ward is almost comical, like a girl in bad Halloween fancy dress and makeup that reduces the fear factor somewhat. Perhaps latter-day audiences have grown out of the pustule form of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and pseudo-realism is the only way to inject some sheer terror, otherwise the end result is a camp dark comedy with synthesized soundtracks to prompt our reactions, however thrilling.

The Ward isn’t quite a grandiose return to form for Carpenter, but it is a highly accomplished and effective horror that highlights the true ‘Master of Horror’ at work, and gives Heard another platform to further carve out her ‘Heroine of Horror’ niche.

***~~ (3/5)

Earlier this week, a partial version of the new John Carpenter directed movie, The Ward hit the net but now, Warner Bros. have just sent us the brand new trailer for the movie which sees Amber Heard play a troubled young girl in this psychological thriller.

The movie also stars Lyndsy Fonseca, Danielle Panabaker, Jared Harris, Mika Boorem, Mamie Gummer and hits UK cinemas 21st January.

Synopsis: John Carpenter’s The Ward, a psychological thriller about a young woman locked in a mysterious mental institution in the 1960s, marks iconic horror master John Carpenter’s first feature film in over seven years.

Kristen (Amber Heard), a beautiful but troubled young woman, finds herself bruised, cut, drugged, and held against her will in a remote ward of a psychiatric hospital.  She is completely disoriented, with no idea why she was brought to this place and no memory of her life before being admitted. All she knows is that she isn’t safe.

The other patients in the ward—four equally disturbed young women—offer no answers, and Kristen quickly realizes things are not as they seem.  The air is heavy with secrets, and at night, when the hospital is dark and foreboding, she hears strange and frightening sounds.  It appears they are not alone.

One-by-one, the other girls begin to disappear and Kristen must find a way out of this hellish place before she, too, becomes a victim.  As she struggles to escape, she will uncover a truth far more dangerous and horrifying than anyone could have imagined.

Check out the full lenght trailer, the new posters and two new images from the movie below and keep your eyes peeled for our review which should go live in the next few weeks.

Aaron Johnson assures us that Kick-Ass 2 is on the way, we have had an idea of the plot and comic book scribe Mark Millar says the sequel has been greenlit. Then Lyndsy Fonseca goes and throws a spanner in the works by saying it is a way off being made yet.

In the words of the song, whatever will be will be and although I cannot wait for another dose of Kick-Ass, it looks like we may all have to. Having said that, we need not wait for the sequel in comic book form as that is well on its way and you can enjoy the cover art below, showing Kick-Ass and Hit Girl, care of Newsarama.

Lyndsy Fonseca, in an interview with MTV, claims that a sequel to Matthew Vaughn’s much-loved Kick-Ass is a long way off.

Fonseca was quoted as saying:

“It’s going to be a while if it does happen [...] Everyone’s kind of working on other things, and there needs to be more issues of the comic before there’s material to do another movie. So wait and see.”

And, if she’s to believed, then it’s not particulary good news. Seeing as most of the actors and actresses involved all seem to be busy in their individual careers, and with Matthew Vaughn currently involved in the production of X-Men: First Class, it’s unlikely Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall will hit our screens for a few years yet.

How do you feel about potentially waiting another few years for Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall? Are you excited to see Kick-Ass, Hit-Girl and Red Mist reunited? Share your thoughts below.

Collider have posted some new images from the upcoming horror-thriller The Ward.

Directed by John Carpenter, his first film since 2001′s Ghosts of Mars, The Ward stars Amber Heard, Lyndsy Fonseca, Jared Harris, Danielle Panabaker and Mika Boorem.

The Ward was co-written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, who were previously responsible for the thriller Long Distance.

John Carpenter’s horror comeback will be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival next month

The new images and synopsis are included below:

When an old farmhouse is set ablaze by Kristen (Amber Heard), a distraught young woman, she is taken by police to the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. She awakens in a special ward with four similarly unbalanced and wayward girls: Sarah, a flirty and sass-talking know it all; Iris, a sensitive and talented artist who tries to make her feel welcome; Emily, a reckless but playful outcast; and Zoey, who hides behind a childlike persona and her beloved stuffed bunny.

Kirsten’s therapist, Dr. Stringer (Jared Harris), tries to uncover the root cause of her breakdown, but despite his calm and understanding manner, she resists any attempts at help and rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, the hospital is not the sanctuary it seems to be. Kristen begins to have strange run-ins with a shadowy phantom who roams the halls when the ward is locked down at night. Persistent and inquisitive, she goes digging for information about former patients and soon becomes convinced that no one ever leaves the ward alive.

The Ward marks a resurgence in director John Carpenter’s celebrated stylistic mojo, with his trademark prowling camera, jump scares, and the sort of atmospherics that typified The Fog and Prince of Darkness.

Set in the sixties, the film’s tone and style have much in common with the works of one of horror’s great, under-recognized masters, Val Lewton, while also nodding in the direction of Samuel Fuller’s cult classic Shock Corridor. Led by previous Midnight Madness starlet Amber Heard, the titular lead from All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Carpenter’s cast of locked-up bad girls brings the picture to life.

The Ward is Carpenter’s return to form after a decade-long absence, further proof that he deserves the mainstream critical respect and recognition of an American auteur.

If the Red Band trailer for John Cusack’s next toe-dip into more commercial waters, Hot Tub Time Machine, got you in the mood for some 80s Quantum Leaping then check out the poster that you’ll see adorning bus stops in the run up to its release.

I like this poster. There’s a simplicity to it and the After and Before mugshots in a nice touch, and you can’t argue with the insertion of a squirrel now can you?

The nostalgia-inclined masses will probably flock, and the world is strewn with Cusack fans so an alcohol infused trip back in time to avoid sleeping with your own mother is just what the doctor ordered. You can click on the image below and watch it grow.

EW.com unleashed this on the world, interested?

Bill and Ted did it in a phone booth, Marty and Doc in a DeLorean. Rod Taylor sat in a MacGyver-esque bucket of Victoriana and now John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke are travelling through time in a hot tub. And they say originality is dead.

After a drunken night in the titular hot tub the group of friends wake to discover that the world has gone all 1986 and they’ll be soul searching, self finding and much debauchery and general lewdness before journey’s end – the shot in the trailer of the gang seeing their younger selves in the mirror is suitably Quantum Leap and with support from a certain Chevy Chase the film looks like an interesting way to spend an evening.

You can see the red band trailer below.

Before you click, check your age, your morals and your surrounds, it’s a red band trailer so work or your parent’s PC might not be the best place to be when you watch this.

Thanks to Trailer Addict for corrupting us.

Kick-Ass seems to be a film that people can’t wait to see. Currently the UK has no official distributor or release date but we’ll keep you informed on when that changes. Here’s the first trailer released for the movie whichis directed by Matthew Vaughn and stars Nicolas Cage, Aaron Johnson, Lyndsy Fonseca, Mark Strong, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Chloe Moretz. It’s been released on Myspace where you can see it in HD or click play below. It’s released in the US 16th April.

Based on the comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., Kick-Ass tells the story of average teenager Dave Lizewski (Johnson), a comic-book fanboy who decides to take his obsession as inspiration to become a real-life superhero. As any good superhero would, he chooses a new name — Kick-Ass — assembles a suit and mask to wear, and gets to work fighting crime. There’s only one problem standing in his way: Kick-Ass has absolutely no superpowers.

Kick-Ass

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