Summary
“Ward of Evil” provides a generic demonic possession story, but at least it’s a bit more convincing than what came before.
This recap of Haunted Season 2, Episode 2, “Ward of Evil”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Haunted Season 2, Episode 2 is immediately more compelling than its predecessor; on the one hand, because its storyteller, Daune, has a witness, and they sometimes communicate like people who actually know each other, and on the other hand because it’s about demonic possession and not CGI ghouls, which is a bit easier to be convincing about. It’s still nonsense, obviously, and the dramatic reenactments are full of run-of-the-mill subgenre cliches, but I’ll take a slight improvement if it’s being offered.
Daune has been a lifelong carer, as Haunted Season 2, Episode 2 explains, first of animals and then of the elderly, many of whom in the nursing home where she worked were afflicted by dementia, a truly evil illness that is scarier than anything in “Ward of Evil”. Before long, an especially weird patient, Jackie, is admitted to the facility, and kept in a room which very quickly revealed itself to contain great evil of a kind of that makes the air conditioning go on the fritz and hurls pictures of Jesus off the walls. Jackie would speak in tongues but eventually fell silent, stopped eating and drinking and ceased all bodily functions, steadily becoming more agitated and aggressive. When Daune and a young aide attempted to give her a bed bath, she sank her teeth into the young woman.
Daune, having presumably seen a movie or two, quickly reasoned that Jackie was under the influence of some malevolent spirit, and so took to reciting the Lord’s Prayer at her, at which point claw marks scrape their way across her back, and she has to frantically undress in front of the residents. Since this obviously left several very clear scars, in the present-day discussion, an older Daune reveals, on-camera, the lingering injuries, so her story becomes much more convincing. But of course, she didn’t actually do that at all, nor did she bother to show off a later injury she apparently received, which resembled an ice pick being thrust through her chest right where her heart is.
Not much later in “Ward of Evil”, and there’s no easy way to say this, Jackie wedges a crucifix in her anus. That’s a rather compelling admission of evil, so the nursing home’s ownership call in some folks from Ohio to perform an exorcism that Daune and her colleagues are, some might say conveniently, not allowed to witness. But the door does creak open at one point to give us a glimpse of Jackie floating over the bed as men point crucifixes at her, having presumably not been informed where she likes to put them.
The Ohio men had a simple conclusion: The room was evil. They left Jackie in it, though, her condition apparently unchanged. Before her death, she once again floated up into the air, sat bolt upright, and told everyone to leave. And leave they eventually did, but only after subsequent residents who stayed in the room continued to die of mysterious ailments that elderly people would never be susceptible to, such as heart attacks and kidney failure. Eventually, the room was boarded up and the place was shut down, though it has, apparently, since been reopened as another nursing home. Does whatever evil contained inside still dwell there, ready to prey on other unsuspecting senior citizens? It’s a real mystery.
