The Ward

Kristen, a young woman with a troubled past, is taken into custody after a farmhouse burns down and is committed to a psychiatric hospital in North Bend. She shares the ward with four other young women, and a doctor tries to work out what led to her breakdown. Kristen has no clear memory of how she came to be there. After dark, she hears unsettling noises and comes to believe that something else is in the building with the patients. When the other women begin to disappear one after another, she becomes convinced she has to get out, and what she eventually learns about the source of the disturbances proves worse than she expected.

The Ward is a horror, mystery and thriller directed by John Carpenter, his twenty-second film in chronological order and the one that followed Cigarette Burns in 2005. Shawn and Michael Rasmussen wrote the screenplay, and Peter Block, Mike Marcus and Doug Mankoff produced. Amber Heard plays Kristen, with Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Jared Harris, Laura-Leigh and Lyndsy Fonseca among the cast; twenty-two performers and fifty crew members are credited.

Made for about 10 million dollars, the film returned roughly 5 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 5.5 out of 10 from around 47,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.7 out of 10 from about 1,320 votes. A critics' rating of 4.5 out of 10 from 73 reviews places it below both audience scores.