Ghosts of Mars

Starring: Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, Pam Grier, Joanna Cassidy
Directed by: John Carpenter
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Horror, Science Fiction
2001

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A group of soliders traveling across Mars to retrieve a murderous prisoner (Ice Cube) find themselves in combat with Martian ghosts who have possessed other colonists.

Review:

Tim: I'm not sure when exactly John Carpenter lost "it", but he certainly did, and Ghosts of Mars is yet another example of that. Carpenter scores points for originality, but this is one of those films that just make you scratch your head. I was a bit surprised that the title could be taken literally. Our protagonists actually fight ghosts on Mars. Maybe they aren't ghosts per se, but they float around, invisible, and possess people. This is certainly an original idea, but it's also pretty ludicrous.

This is the first, and biggest problem I had with the film. I could never wrap my brain around this. Rather than having soldiers fight an actual Martian army (that would have been expensive), we have a cloud that invades people, makes them mutilate themselves, and turns them into murderous psychos. I just found this whole thing unexciting. Carpenter gets some credit for using this to create some gross, cringe-worthy scenes (the self-mutilation especially), but the whole thing just comes across as stupid. But, this alone shouldn't ruin a movie, so I'll suspend my disbelief as much as I can.

Our heroes are led by Natasha Henstridge. There's the next problem. Henstridge can be called a lot of things, but a strong actor is not one of them. She certainly gave off a vibe of being a tough, no nonsense police officer (with a drug problem), but her line readings and her overall acting ability were quite weak. I could never take her seriously in the lead role. We also have Ice Cube, who plays a character named "Desolation" Williams. Maybe this is a cool name, but I laughed a little every time I heard it. I get what it was trying to accomplish, but it just seemed so cartoonish. Ice Cube (I almost called him Cube, can you do that?) is not a great actor, and actually looked a bit too chunky for the role. He was supposed to be this uber-cool outlaw like Riddick from Pitch Black, but he mostly just made me roll my eyes. It was not his best role. The film also features Jason Statham in a supporting role. Statham is someone I usually like, but he had nothing to work with here. He wasn't bad in his role, but he was caught up in a completely silly movie, and it shows.

If you are going to set your movie on the surface of Mars, you need to have a budget to suppot that. This film's special effects were atrocious. I tried to be kind and look past them, but there's a few scenes of the train, especially, that just look awful. The whole film would have been helped by better effects to make us actually believe we were on Mars, rather than a painted desert in the United States. This isn't a major concern for me, but it does hurt the film.

The biggest problem with this movie is that despite the Mars setting and making our villains weird ghosts, is that the whole movie feels completely tired and overdone. There's nothing here on the action, horror, or science fiction side that hasn't already been done numerous times before. The whole thing is quite predictable, especially because we start out in the present, have an idea of how it all ends up, and then watch the whole movie in flashbacks. This removes a great deal of the suspense, because we already know who survives. I'm not sure why Carpenter did this. That brings up another issue. I laughed at how many flashbacks were in this film. The majority of it is told in flashbacks, but in the flashbacks, we have other characters who reveal details of something that happened, and we flashback to that event as well. It's a clever idea that I do not hate outright, but it just got to be a little much. Pay attention to it, because it eventually becomes a little silly.

I really do appreciate John Carpenter trying to do something different with this film. Unfortunately for him and the audience, it just doesn't work. This film felt like someone took an interesting idea, and then executed it in a rushed, lazy manner. It didn't feel like anyone in this film was really trying their best (except maybe Statham). That shows up on screen. This is a stupid, dull, redundant movie. I didn't care for it much at all.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Mission to Mars, Red Planet