Reviews of The Ward are unique in that they accuse Carpenter of being derivative of himself, which could be seen as both a  blessing and a curse. His techniques harken back to his 1970′s heyday of films such as Starman, Halloween, and Escape from New York, but, like a copy of a copy, the word on the street is that The Ward just isn’t that sharp, rarely leaving convention to tell a story the plot of which has been recycled early and often.

The film begins, as many horror movies do, with a half-naked woman named Kristen (Amber Heard) running through the woods. She is eventually caught by authorities and thrown into a psychiatric ward in response to a number of fires she had set. Once institutionalized, she is haunted by the ghosts of a former patient and stumbles on to a mystery as to what became of the former patients.

Jump scares abound as Kristen negotiates the hospital, still half-naked, we pray. Much of the context sounds painfully derivative of not only Carpenter’s work, but many of the B-grade psychological thrillers that have trickled out in recent years. No US release date is set for the film, but the movie drops in Britain on January 21st. (/Film)