HollywoodNews.com: There is nothing particularly wrong with The Ward, there is just little about it to stand out amongst the sea of similar genre entries, to say nothing of the whole slew of direct-to-dvd films that fill the shelves of Blockbuster and the queue of Netflix any given day. That this film was given a token theatrical release just last month is only because it happens to be helmed by one of the more respected horror filmmakers of the 1970s and 1980s. But the era of John Carpenter is long over. While I can tell you that the film looks more polished and more overtly cinematic that it likely would have if directed by someone less esteemed, the picture remains a relative non-entity. It’s not bad so much as it’s not very good in any notable way.

A token amount of plot: Its 1966 and Kristen (Amber Heard...