John Carpenter had already secured his reputation as one of the most important figures in mainstream horror decades before he bowed out of directing with his final feature, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t wish he’d delivered something better than The Ward.

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Not only did the psychological nightmare secure a decidedly tepid 33 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, but upwards of 10,000 users disliked it even more than critics, chipping its audience approval rating down to a meager 26 percent. Frankly, that’s not what such a legendary filmmaker deserved, and matters were compounded by outright box office disaster.

Even though The Ward only cost $10 million to produce, it barely made half of that back during its theatrical run, bringing a behind the camera career that yielded Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, and many more unadulterated classics to an unceremonious and undignified end.

However, virtually any widely-panned film is open to reinterpretation, and while the rose-tinted glasses haven’t been put back on, Redditors are at least attempting to drum up faint praise for Carpenter’s swansong. Unfortunately, the most encouraging consensus is that it’s perfectly acceptable, fairly generic, and ultimately unoriginal supernatural fare, which doesn’t sound particularly fitting given his status.

A by-the-numbers ghost story, Amber Heard’s Kristen finds herself admitted to a psychiatric unit where the vengeful spirit of a former patient continues to terrorize the current residents, but naturally, nobody believes her. From there, things play out exactly as you’d expect, drawing a middling line under Carpenter’s directorial career.