It’s not easy to admit it when one of your favorite directors is inexorably past his prime. That’s why it’s pretty painful, albeit true, that John Carpenter hasn’t really done anything of note lately. The closest he’s come to making a decent film in the past fifteen years is his first episode of “Masters of Horror,” Cigarette Burns, which echoed Lovecraft and was reminiscent of Carpenter’s own underrated In the Mouth of Madness. But aside from that gem, Carpenter’s work has just not been up to snuff: Vampires was a bore; his attempt to enter the abortion debate in Pro-Life was confusing; Ghosts of Mars was flat-out awful.
Though The Ward promises to be a return to form for the Halloween creator, it ultimately fizzles. It could simply be that after several lackluster films in a row, Carpenter just can’t get a good screenplay. All the pieces are in place for The Ward to be a perfectly acceptable shocker, except that the writing is terrible, and the movie has one of those endings that makes you roll your eyes with the velocity of a jet engine.
Still, Carpenter does his best with it. He especially makes a believable environment out of the Ward itself: a typically drab, confining psych ward at an industrial-looking hospital. Kristen (Amber Heard) has been sent there after burning down a house, and along with several of the other inmates (Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Lyndsy Fonseca, Laura-Leigh) begins to suspect that there is a supernatural presence lurking there.
Carpenter uses the building to its full effect, and stages a number of neat chase sequences. The cat-and-mouse game between Kristen and one of the orderlies (Dan Anderson) is so much fun that you wish the movie had ditched the whole ghost thing and been about the two of them. The supernatural being haunting the ward seems to follow no rules and can appear at any place and any time, which means that its only goal must be to sneak up on the characters and go “Boo!” This becomes tiresome after a while.
Though the screenplay by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen doesn’t give them much other than stereotype to work with, the cast is exceptional. Heard is very good as the strong-willed Kristen. Gummer, the daughter of Meryl Streep, takes a fairly one-note character and makes her likable.
Though The Ward doesn’t come remotely close to Carpenter’s early work, the shades of the old master still show. With a better screenplay, he may have come closer to making one more truly unique Carpenter film, but as it is, he’s still in a slump.
On the other side, one pair of directors who—though also past their prime—are still doing some pretty decent work is the Farrelly Brothers. Though it’s been a while since their blend of sweetness and vulgarity has been the rage, their most recent film, Hall Pass, is a surprisingly endearing and often laugh-out-loud funny exploration of the male ego.
The Farrellys have often centered their films on some kind of human disability or detriment and explored how their characters deal with it, whether it be obesity in Shallow Hal, conjoined twins in Stuck on You, or just plain absent-mindedness in Dumb and Dumber. Here, their disability of choice is maleness.
Like many other Farrelly films, it is a Premise Movie: a couple of sexually frustrated, testosterone-fueled middle-aged guys (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis) get permission from their wives to take a “week off” from marriage, in hopes that their relationships will be stronger afterward. There is essentially one joke in the movie—that Wilson and Sudeikis are so far out of touch that they don’t have the slightest idea what to do with their newfound freedom—but because of an exceptional cast, the one joke is able to sustain itself.
In less capable hands, the movie might have seemed lame; the two gents’ frequent use of dated pickup lines seems a little extreme, even for them. But Wilson and Sudeikis are completely believable as the two goofs, and we’re with them all the way. Stephen Merchant (Ricky Gervais’s collaborator on “The Office” and “Extras”) is also very funny as one of their friends, as is the irreplaceable Richard Jenkins as a rich playboy who takes them under his wing. Yes, you read that right.
1. Hall Pass (2011): Jan. 2
2. The Ward (2011): Jan. 2
3. The Muppets (2011): Jan. 2
4. The Maid (2005): Jan. 6
A weak start, I know. But I’ll pick it up as we go along.
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