The Ward (2010)

The Ward is the latest film directed by one of my favorite directors, John Carpenter. It is a story about four or five girls in their teens/early 20s, living in a special security ward in an insane asylum during the 1960s. A new girl arrives and quickly learns this ward is no normal place. The film has wonderful cinematography, wonderful creepy hospital atmosphere, as well as a really nice 60s feel to it at times (a highlight is a dance scene in the ward set to a sixties vinyl single playing on the phonograph). The acting is also really good, but this movie is far from perfect. A lot of the scares in the film are given away by the musical score, or are just really predictable/cliche at times. The movie's mystery does remain a mystery for most of the movie, but I felt the ending was fairly anticlimactic as well as fairly predictable. This movie goes from an interesting compelling unique story to almost a "cop out" of a psychological thriller. The film turns out to be similar to another film I've reviewed on this blog called Identity (2003). There aren't any big name stars in this one, but all of the girls are fairly recognizable from various movies and TV shows made within the last ten years. This film is available to stream on Netlfix, and  I give this one a 3.25/5, you can view the trailer below:

Coma (1978) original

The second Crichton film I saw recently was the movie Coma (1978) it was not written by Crichton but was directed by him and based on the best selling novel of the same name. When patients go in for routine surgeries but come out in Comas, a doctor grows suspicious and does some investigating of her own. The cast was great featuring Richard Widmark and a young Michael Douglas, Ed Harris, and Tom Sellick. This one is a little slow and boring at times (the majority of the film has no musical score), and the plot can be fairly predictable at times as well (it's really similar to a film called Green for Danger [1946]) but production value is top notch (cinematography, editing, acting, what music there actually is, etc.). The film wasn't as futuristic as Looker, but it was interesting and believable in the sense that corrupt crooked things happen by those you should trust quite often (i.e.rarely trust the government, stuff like that ). I give this a 3.75/5. Also in case you can't tell what's in the background of the image up top, there's another view of it above to the left. Though a lot can be predicted about this movie, it does have a surprise or two so I will not explain the image or any more about the film. View trailer below: