Breaking up with someone you love is never easy, but sometimes tough love is the only solution. Back in the day, it was difficult to find someone who didn't [heart] John Carpenter. He was, after all responsible for classics such as Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, Escape from New York and The Thing. Great films one and all.

And then something happened. Sure, we will still curious about what he was up to, but when we found out (Escape from LA & Vampires, for example) it was difficult not to feel let down and disappointed.

By the time the noughties arrived, Carpenter just popped his head out once early on in 2001 with the below average Ghosts of Mars, before withdrawing to work on a TV series that nobody watched (Masters of Horror).

And yet when you hear that someone who brought such gruesome joy into your life has made another film after a nine year absence, there's a glimmer of hope that there still might be something there after all this time.

It's 1966 and Kristen (Amber Heard) has been dragged away from a burning building, which she set fire to. For her own safety (and probably that of other flammable buildings in the area), she is taken to North Bend's Psychiatric hospital.

Although she can't remember much before the fire, she's pretty adamant that she's not a loon like the rest of them locked up in the facility.

It doesn't take long – her very first night to be precise – before she notices that there's something not quite right about North Bend. There appears to be someone or thing lurking in the shadows and they don't appear to be at all happy.

After probing the other patients, she gets the name of Alice Hudson. Alice has issues; the kind of issues that seem to prevent Kristen from breaking out of the hospital and going on her merry way. Whatever problems Alice has, it looks like Kristen's madness isn't going to end any time soon.

Since when is it a crime to appear in a bad John Carpenter film? Oh now? Really?!

So, a retro psychiatric facility; it certainly sounds encouraging. It could have been a lot worse, like a musical or something. But if there's one thing John Carpenter knows about it's how to create tension in isolated locales. Scratch that, used to know.

It's unclear as to Carpenter's current financial situation, but if this film is anything to go by, he was in desperate need of a pay check. The Ward feels like the work of a broken man. There are elements within it that are reminiscent of his earlier work, but just don't have the same kind of impact.

That's not to say that it's a bad film. As psychological thrillers go, this one has the odd thrill and spill. It would certainly pass the time on a dark evening on C5 if there wasn't anything else on, and possibly alert you to further films if it were from a budding director. But this is John Carpenter we're talking about here, and by his once high standards, this is a ghost of his former glory. And not even a scary one at that.

He certainly can't blame the casting; Heard does pretty much everything right that's asked of her. And having Jared Harris (Mad Men's Lane Pryce) should have been a canny piece of casting, and yet his contribution as Dr Stringer is nothing other than ordinary.

Ultimately The Ward is yet another example of an average film by a once extraordinary talent. Sorry John, but this time it was definitely you and not us.