“It was an opportunity to work with the Weinstein Company,” Panabaker says of why she took the film on. “They make fantastic movies so it was great to do business with them. There is a certain comedic element to the film that I hadn’t had a chance to do recently. There are some really talented comedians in the cast. It was a lot of fun.”

When asked about this film’s level of gore and tits: “You can expect exactly the same! I don’t know that we went through quite as much blood as they did in the first one. Our set was more confined, since it was in a water park instead of Lake Havasu. There is lots of T&A. From my first scene, there is a lot of that going on, and it just continues throughout. It will not disappoint.”

But will fans of her finally see her in her birthday suit? “No. Absolutely not. I do spend a fair amount of the movie in my bikini, though.” Fair enough, and respectful.

Either way, fans are gearing up for this baby!

Source: Fearnet

After torching a farmhouse for reasons unknown, Kristen (Amber Heard) is whisked away by the police to the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital in North Bend, Oregon. A bitchy nurse leads her to her new home, a ward with four other young women with issues of their own. Kristen starts seeing a ghostly figure who is haunting the halls and who has already killed a former resident. From day one, she believes she is sane and tries her best to break out of the looney bin. As the appearance of the rotting ghoul becomes more frequent and deadly, Kristen grows more desperate to escape before she becomes the next victim. Her appointed doctor (Jared Harris) tries everything from therapy to shock treatment to help her fragile psyche, but the horrific visions continue and one by one the girls are murdered by Alice Hudson, a former patient who has revenge on her mind.

A central location where a group of characters have to escape evil has been a hallmark of every great John Carpenter film, and that comes in to play here as he turns this infirmary into the spookiest sick bay this side of The Exorcist III and Jacob’s Ladder. Come to think of it, The Ward owes a lot to the 1990 nail-biter, as the macabre moments seem like an homage to Adrian Lyne’s film. You never know what is going to be behind the next corner as the maestro’s widescreen ratio impacts every frame, which is astonishing considering some of the confined spaces he has to shoot in. There are some jolt scares that you come to expect, and Carpenter makes the wise decision not to show the monster too much. All of the acting is above average, and while Amber Heard is competent as the lead, it is Danielle Panabaker as Sarah who shows great range in a secondary role.

What The Ward could have used more of is a less monotonous pace as there never is a sense of urgency, which causes scenes to lag. That could have been alleviated if Carpenter had scored the film, but unfortunately he gave that assignment to Mark Kilian, who drops the ball by not bringing a sense of uneasiness when it’s needed. There is also a “hook” in the film that may or may not rub fans the wrong way.

It is great to have John Carpenter back in the saddle again, and although The Ward is no Halloween or The Thing, it is his best movie since the Lovecraftian tale In the Mouth of Madness.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Jason Bene: The Ward is your first feature film since Ghosts of Mars. Why haven’t we seen you directing besides your two episodes of Masters of Horror (Cigarette Burns, Pro-Life)?  

John Carpenter: I just had to stop for a while. I just had to take a break. I found myself burnt out a little. I was tired of the business and I was tired of working. It didn’t help that Ghosts of Mars didn’t do very well at the box-office. I decided it’s time to sit down and relax for a while. I had a lot of basketball to watch.

Jason Bene: The timing was bad for Ghost of Mars because 9/11 happened a few weeks after its release. Fans need to remember that from Halloween to Ghosts of Mars, you didn’t take that much time off in between movies.

John Carpenter: You got it, my friend. You got it. It was just a necessity for my own life. I had to just stop for a while. I really had to stop.

Jason Bene: I have a two-month old daughter and it has put my future in perspective. What I do for a living is not my life.

John Carpenter: (Laughs) That’s true. That’s true. How is your two-month old daughter doing?

Jason Bene: She is doing great! She is almost twelve pounds. She is starting to sleep a little longer during the night. For a while she was getting up every two hours to eat and it was killing us. But you look at that face and it’s all worth it.

John Carpenter: I know. I know. They are cuties. Just wait until she gets to be a teenager. Just you wait. Your time is coming.

Jason Bene: Is it true that The Ward is the first film you haven’t shot in Panavision since Dark Star?

John Carpenter: I shot it widescreen and not Panavision. You are right. You are absolutely right. It was budget. I wasn’t really in control of that stuff. I had to meet a budget and had to do it. We shot widescreen, but it was not Panavision. It was interesting. It was real interesting to do opposed to Panavision, which I dearly love. Nothing looks as good as Panavision. Nothing does. No film looks any better. But that was not the way it was done in this film. So I just accepted it, like I accept everything else about life.

Jason Bene: You didn’t write or score the film. Did that give you breathing room so you could concentrate on your directorial duties?

John Carpenter: It’s all too hard. Man, oh, man. Mark Kilian is a very talented composer. He is really really talented guy. I thought we’ll make this guy do the work. He just did a tremendous job for me. I’ve kind of slowed down now. The Ward was a perfect movie to come back and do movies with. What I mean by that is, it was a low budget film with a small cast. It all took place in one area. It was confined spaces. And it had a small cast. It was right up my alley. I didn’t want to do anything bigger than that. Masters of Horror was a lot of fun to do. But they were a week’s work, where this is thirty days. It was a deal and a great time. I love my cast! I love each of them. What can I say? I’m in a mental institution with beautiful Hollywood actresses. Nothing is better. Nothing. It’s awesome! It was great. I had a great time.

Jason Bene: A lot of naysayers think Amber Heard is a pretty face and can’t act. Maybe this type of meaty role will prove them wrong.

John Carpenter: She’s got a lot of talent. She’s got a whole lot of talent. I think her time will come. You never know. Sometimes fate plays tricks on you, but I think she’s going to be fine. I really loved working with her.

Jason Bene: Getting back to the score. Did you consider having your son, Cody, do the composing?

John Carpenter: He was in Japan at the time. He was in Japan teaching. He’s back now, thank God. I thought, well, okay, I’ll work with somebody I haven’t worked with before. That will be interesting to do.

Jason Bene: I haven’t seen The Ward yet, but from the theatrical trailer the music had a very Argento feel to it.

John Carpenter: We discussed it. The director kind of guides the music like he does everything else. I did a little guidance here and there. Mark brought it. He was just fabulous. I loved working with him.

Jason Bene: This is your first period film since Christine. How did it feel to do a horror film set in the 60′s?

John Carpenter: It’s not that hard. I was there. I remember what it was like. It takes place in ’66. The reason we did that was because we had to choose a period of time when there was still involuntary incarceration in a mental institution. In other words, by 1966 you still could be put away for an extended period of time. But that all changed in the 70′s. It all changed. So that was the reason to do it then. It was great. We had a great time doing it. It was fun. The girls did a little dance for me one night. It was great fun, just great fun.

Jason Bene: For The Thing, the creatures were out in the open to be seen, whereas with In The Mouth of Madness, you kept them in the shadows. How did you approach them in The Ward?

John Carpenter: Just very briefly seen. Very briefly. Hidden is the wrong word. It was done not out in the open so much.

Jason Bene: Monster nerds like myself really love seeing the creatures.

John Carpenter: Me too! But it wasn’t that kind of film.

Jason Bene: The movie to me looks like Jacob’s Ladder meets One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. How would you describe it?

John Carpenter: (Laughs) It really is Shutter Island. That’s what it is. You’ll see. It’s an old school horror film, because I’m an old school kind of guy.

Jason Bene: How hard is it to scare audiences today when you have terrible events happening all around the world? Can they be scared?

John Carpenter: They can be scared, but real life is scarier. My God! What’s been going on is unbelievable. I’ve had several people come to me and say, “What’s going on with our world? Is it the end of the world?” I don’t think so.

Jason Bene: I think people have been watching films like Roland Emmerich’s 2012 too much.

John Carpenter: I didn’t see that. I don’t think so. Not yet. It’s crazy times.

Jason Bene: The Ward has already been released in the UK. Is there a domestic release date yet?

John Carpenter: Yes, it is coming out in three months. Very soon.

Premiere Picture

“Kristen, a beautiful but troubled young woman, finds herself bruised, cut, drugged, and held against her will in a remote ward of a psychiatric hospital. She is completely disoriented with no idea why she was brought to this place and no memory of her life before being admitted. All she knows is that she isn’t safe.

The other patients in the ward, four equally disturbed young women, offer no answers; and Kristen quickly realizes things are not as they seem. The air is heavy with secrets, and at night, when the hospital is dark and foreboding, she hears strange and frightening sounds. It appears they are not alone.

One-by-one the other girls begin to disappear, and Kristen must find a way out of this hellish place before she, too, becomes a victim. As she struggles to escape, she will uncover a truth far more dangerous and horrifying than anyone could have imagined.”

Check out my recent interview with John where we looked back on his film Prince of Darkness.

“Kristen, a beautiful but troubled young woman, finds herself bruised, cut, drugged, and held against her will in a remote ward of a psychiatric hospital. She is completely disoriented with no idea why she was brought to this place and no memory of her life before being admitted. All she knows is that she isn’t safe.

The other patients in the ward, four equally disturbed young women, offer no answers; and Kristen quickly realizes things are not as they seem. The air is heavy with secrets, and at night, when the hospital is dark and foreboding, she hears strange and frightening sounds. It appears they are not alone.

One-by-one the other girls begin to disappear, and Kristen must find a way out of this hellish place before she, too, becomes a victim. As she struggles to escape, she will uncover a truth far more dangerous and horrifying than anyone could have imagined.”

I had the opportunity to chat with Breck about his remake of George A. Romero’s 1973 film that is currently playing in theaters across the nation.

Jason Bene: There has been talk of you directing the remakes of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Brood. How did The Crazies come across your desk?

Breck Eisner: I am not on “Creature” anymore, I was on that for almost two years, I think. I have been approached for The Brood, but I am not committed and I haven’t decided if I’m going to tackle that. I have no idea on that at all. While I was developing “Creature“, I was also concurrently developing The Crazies. In fact, The Crazies was probably a three-year process. I think I started The Crazies actually before I signed on to “Creature”. I was brought into it by Michael Aguilar and Dean Georgaris who had a production deal with Paramount. They got the rights to The Crazies directly from Romero, and the fact that Romero was deciding to option his own material and was going to benefit financially from it were two indicators that gave me confidence in doing it. As we developed the movie, The Crazies script came out great. They had a script when they first approached me – I liked it but I had a different point of view on how to do the script – so we hired a different writer and rewrote the script. While I was developing “Creature” it didn’t quite go as planned scriptwise, and then the writers strike hit and “Creature” went on hold. Then I put my energy towards getting The Crazies off the ground. We actually jumped around from three studios. We were at Paramount first and they decided they weren’t going to make it. Then Rogue picked it up and then they changed ownership, and they decided they weren’t going to make it. And that’s when I finally got it to Overture Films and Participant Media.

Jason Bene: The original had that Romero vibe of being filmed around Pittsburgh and you chose Lenox, Iowa for this film. Besides being part of the script, was there something interesting about the rural setting that you liked?

Breck Eisner: Yeah, there were a couple of things. We shot in Iowa and Georgia specifically because of tax incentives and aesthetic, they go hand in hand. There was no way we could afford to shoot in a state that didn’t have a tax incentive, which Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania didn’t have at the level that these places (Georgia and Iowa) had. But even before the tax incentive we developed the movie with the idea of an open midwest state. I wanted the idea of this kind of North by Northwest open epic feeling where you can stand in the middle of a crossroads and turn 360 degrees and see for miles and miles with no trees, no buildings, no mountains. This idea that would allow me to shoot these kind of epic vast plains, but at the same time it would feel contained and claustrophobic because there is nowhere to hide and nowhere to go. You are a target for the military or for the ”Crazies” at any point. It seemed like a way to really give it a vast scope, yet at the same time still keep it kind of claustrophobic and dangerous.

Jason Bene: I like the fact that “The Crazies” have the diseased look, yet they are not part of the undead family. Was there a conscious effort to stradle that line between zombie and horribly infected?

Breck Eisner: I really didn’t want it to be a zombie movie. Obviously everyone hears Romero, remake, and then said let’s see the ads – zombies. Yes, there is a zombie quality to the movie overall, I guess, but if you want to really pigeonhole it into a genre you could say it. They are not zombies. They are clearly not undead; they are not acting as a cohesive whole. Everybody’s not trying to do the same thing like eat brains or infect. People maintain a sense of their identity just ever so slightly. The disease unleashes this raw, inner kind of turmoil that exists in all the different characters and this rage state they go into. So, I didn’t want it to be undead and we kind of tried to follow that in the design of them as well. When they first start to go crazy they don’t exhibit any external signs of the disease, but as they become more and more infected the disease takes over and ravages the body. But it’s not like they turn grey and sort of decay, in fact, they get more red and they pulse with life as the blood courses through their veins. They actually are burning brighter and hotter, but shorter, as they fade out in a day or two.

Jason Bene: George A. Romero is a producer on the film. Was he hands on or did he leave you alone to make your picture?

Breck Eisner: He definitely said make your own movie. He was on in the very beginning and he sold the rights personally to Michael and Dean, so he sanctioned making the movie. And then he said “Look, I’ve made this movie once, you guys do your thing. This is an interpretation of what I did, you have my document, which is the movie that I made to see what I did. Go and do what you want to do.” Then when we finished we screened it for him in Toronto and I had a very nerve-wracking call after. He was very positive when I talked to him and he went on record publicly saying how much he liked it.

Jason Bene: Did you feel there were improvements you could make on the original? The Crazies is not considered a classic like Dawn of the Dead.

Breck Eisner: I’m a lot more comfortable remaking a movie that is not considered as classic as another one. You’re still remaking the master George A. Romero, but it’s not like you are remaking one of his known to be best films. It’s a good movie, I like The Crazies, but it does have some flaws. I think primarily because of his really limited budget. When you are talking as a low a budget he had, in the $200,000 range, he couldn’t hire professional actors or military set designers. He couldn’t do the wardrobe right for the containment officers. That was one aspect of the movie that we really updated. I wanted the military to look really real, I wanted the protocol to feel very real. I wanted it to feel like it was a movie that you could believe that was the response that the military would take.

Jason Bene: This past weekend you went toe-to-toe with the biggest movie of all-time, Martin Scorsese, Bruce Willis, and The Olympics. I believe $16 million at the box-office for a “R” Rated horror film with these obstacles is quite remarkable.

Breck Eisner: Thank you, I appreciate it. We were in a lot less theaters and had a lot less advertising dollars. It’s a testament to the fans, the fans really came out, which I appreciated. Hopefully they will continue to see it in case they missed it this weekend and will support a movie that got strong reviews and people really did respond to. It’s a genre that I love and a genre that I think a lot of people feel very passionate about and it’s one that I respect. I don’t think it can be a cheap genre that you can just throw it by the book numbers moviemaking. I tried hard to make a movie that had strong characters, had interesting scares, had a good story to tell, and hopefully people respect it for that.

Killer Film would like to thank Director Breck Eisner for giving such an in-depth interview for our readers, and you can read my very positive review for The Crazies here.

A plane carrying a secret biological weapon crashes into a lake in the diminutive town of Ogden Marsh, Iowa contaminating the water supply. The toxin slowly takes over individuals causing them to kill and maim their neighbors and loved ones. The first sign of trouble is when a baseball game is brought to a halt by a shotgun toting “crazy” who gets a bullet to the brain courtesy of the local sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant). Soon enough, he and Deputy Russell Clank (Joe Anderson) are bombarded with phone calls reporting random violence and strange behavior.

The U.S. government arrives with guns and contamination suits and are hellbent on keeping this outbreak from spreading any further. They take David’s pregnant wife Judy (Radha Mitchell) to be “cleansed” because she shows signs of the disease, so the couple makes an escape along with Russell and townie Becca (Danielle Panabaker). From here we are left with four people that we genuinely care about as they run into the lion’s den time and time again.

Now look away, I am going to talk about the end. Remember how cool the finale of Return of the Living Dead was when a bomb was dropped on a small city by our beloved higher ups? Imagine if you will a Terminator 2: Judgement Day sized nuclear blast that literally shook the whole damn theater. Talk about going out with a bang!

Other than his episode of Fear Itself [The Sacrifice], I am not that familiar with the work of director Breck Eisner. I know he made Sahara, which a lot of fans seemed to abhor, but I can say he has made a damn good film that pushed the original that much further back into the recesses of my mind. He has a slick visual style that meshed well with the bloody carnage on display from Robert Hall [Laid to Rest] and his team of FX artists. You really felt like this town exists and that these are the last people on Earth. On a negative note, Breck does overly rely on the ‘boo’ scare tactic that is getting really cliché and outdated.

While The Crazies is a redux of a 1973 flick, you can’t help but think of The Stand, Outbreak, and more recently Carriers, in its depiction of a bacterium that causes death, madness and lunacy. And just for the record, these are not zombies; they are deranged son of a guns with a predilection for murder.

Bottom line: you’d be crazy to not see this killer film that also has a cameo from Lynn Lowry, who was in the original.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Source: GeekTyrant

Synopsis:

“Imagine living in a small town where everything is safe and happy…until suddenly it isn’t. Imagine your friends and neighbors going quickly and horrifically insane. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

David Dutten (Timothy Olyphant) is sheriff of Ogden Marsh, a picture-perfect American town with happy, law-abiding citizens. But one night, one of them comes to a school baseball game with a loaded shotgun, ready to kill. Another man burns down his own house…after locking his wife and young son in a closet inside. Within days, the town has transformed into a sickening asylum; people who days ago lived quiet, unremarkable lives have now become depraved, blood-thirsty killers, hiding in the darkness with guns and knives. Sheriff Dutten tries to make sense of what’s happening as the horrific, nonsensical violence escalates. Something is infecting the citizens of Ogden Marsh…with insanity.

Now complete anarchy reigns as one by one the townsfolk succumb to an unknown toxin and turn sadistically violent. In an effort to keep the madness contained, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won’t let anyone in or out – even those uninfected. The few still sane find themselves trapped: Sheriff Dutten; his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell); Becca (Danielle Panabaker), an assistant at the medical center; and Russell (Joe Anderson), Dutten’s deputy and right-hand man. Forced to band together, an ordinary night becomes a horrifying struggle for survival as they do their best to get out of town alive.”

Source: Bloody Disgusting

The Crazies

Synopsis: Imagine living in a small town where everything is safe and happy…until suddenly it isn’t. Imagine your friends and neighbors going quickly and horrifically insane. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

David Dutten (Timothy Olyphant) is sheriff of Ogden Marsh, a picture-perfect American town with happy, law-abiding citizens. But one night, one of them comes to a school baseball game with a loaded shotgun, ready to kill. Another man burns down his own house…after locking his wife and young son in a closet inside. Within days, the town has transformed into a sickening asylum; people who days ago lived quiet, unremarkable lives have now become depraved, blood-thirsty killers, hiding in the darkness with guns and knives. Sheriff Dutten tries to make sense of what’s happening as the horrific, nonsensical violence escalates. Something is infecting the citizens of Ogden Marsh…with insanity.

Now complete anarchy reigns as one by one the townsfolk succumb to an unknown toxin and turn sadistically violent. In an effort to keep the madness contained, the government uses deadly force to close off all access and won’t let anyone in or out – even those uninfected. The few still sane find themselves trapped: Sheriff Dutten; his pregnant wife, Judy (Radha Mitchell); Becca (Danielle Panabaker), an assistant at the medical center; and Russell (Joe Anderson), Dutten’s deputy and right-hand man. Forced to band together, an ordinary night becomes a horrifying struggle for survival as they do their best to get out of town alive.

Source: Bloody Disgusting

 The film, which stars Jared Harris (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Mamie Gummer (Taking Woodstock), and Lyndsy Fonseca (Kick-Ass) joining Amber Heard (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) and Danielle Panabaker (that shitty Friday the 13th remake) and was written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, is an intense psychological thriller set in a mental institution where a young woman, Kristen (Heard), is haunted by a mysterious and deadly ghost. As danger creeps closer, she comes to realize that this ghost might be darker than she ever could have imagined.

Today we learn from JustJared that Lindsey Lohan has actually gone over the script for the upcoming remake, and enjoyed it so much that she contacted the films producers and got a role on the film.

Andrew Fuller the films producer responds: Michael, Bradley and I couldn’t imagine having a better actress for the part and without an audition we cast her.

Seems Lohan beat out the likes of Sophia Bush and Danielle Panabaker for the lead role in the film.

 ****UPDATE**** It appears the folks over at JustJared completely made up the news story along with the quotes.  Andrew Fuller had been contacted and denies even  speaking with the company.

Source: Just Jared