[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_ward_movie_poster_01.png]]

->''Only sanity can keep you alive.''
-->-- '''{{Tagline}}'''

A 2010 horror film directed by Creator/JohnCarpenter, starring Creator/AmberHeard, Creator/DaniellePanabaker, Creator/LyndsyFonseca and Creator/JaredHarris.

After burning down an abandoned house, a young woman named Kristen is taken to a psychiatric hospital, where she is placed into a specific ward with other disturbed girls. She then soon learns that they're being haunted by a ghost who wants to kill them all.

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!!This film has examples of:

* TheSixties: The film is set in the year 1966.
* AirVentPassageway: Deciding to search for the missing Iris during the night, Kristen and Emily use a ventilation shaft to get out of the ward, which is conveniently big enough to crawl through.
* AliceAllusion: The film is a story set in an insane asylum with a toy rabbit as a plot point, and has Alice as the name of the ghost.
* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Sarah gets killed to the grief of no one, given her AlphaBitch status]].
* BedlamHouse: Played with. It's hard to tell if the titular ward is actually an example or just the result of the protagonist's insanity (she does do a few things that could warrant a certain amount of brutality). Also it's hard to say if the real horror is the staff or the ghost that's supposedly killing the patients one by one.
* ChekhovsGunman: The man and woman (called "the sad people" by Emily) that Kristen notices looking at her and the other girls during an outing. [[spoiler:They are the parents of Alice, hoping that their daughter will someday overcome her multiple personality disorder]].
* DestinationDefenestration: Alice attacks Kristen in Dr. Stringer's office, and they both end up crashing through a window. [[spoiler:This, combined with TheReveal from Dr. Stringer, helps Alice to overcome her multiple personality disorder. Well, mostly]].
* EyeScream: Iris disappears from Dr. Stringer's office after a session, and is taken to an empty operating room where she gets a needle jammed into her eyesocket.
* HighVoltageDeath: Sarah is captured by Alice's ghost, and she's taken to the electric shock therapy room, where she's strapped down and electrocuted to death.
* IronicEcho: Roy the orderly says "Sleep tight, sugar" to Kristen after she's left in her room in a straight-jacket for the night. She later throws these words back at him before knocking him out temporarily.
* MirrorScare:
** After an argument with Emily, Sarah storms off. She then decides to take a quick look into her mirror. She sees Alice behind her in the reflection, and tries to hide from her.
** [[spoiler:A variation happens in the ending. The supposedly cured Alice opens a mirror cabinet, only to be attacked by Kristen]].
* NeckLift: In the opening, something comes into the room of Tammy, one of the girls in the ward, and she gets lifted in the air by her neck from behind. Her [[NeckSnap neck then gets snapped]].
* ThePlace: All the haunted girls are placed in a section of the psychiatric hospital simply called the ward.
* TheReveal: [[spoiler:When Kristen confronts Dr. Stringer about the ghost of Alice and the deaths of the other girls, he tells her that [[TomatoInTheMirror she actually is Alice]], or rather, a SplitPersonality of her. [[EveryoneIsATomato Kristen, and all the other girls in the ward are actually side personalities]] created by Alice due to a trauma of being kidnapped and abused, and Alice's "ghost" is her trying to regain control of her own body by getting rid off of the other personalities]].
* ShowerScene: Kristen has her first face to face contact with Alice when she grabs her by throat in the shower room.
%%* SingleIssuePsychology
* SlashedThroat: Afraid of Alice's ghost, Emily tries to slit her wrist with a scalpel. The ghost then suddenly appears behind her, and slits her throat.
* StealthPun: The fact that the above EyeScream example happens to a character named Iris - the iris also happens to be the name of part of the eye.

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