Ghosts of Mars is set in the distant future year of 2176 on the planet of Mars which is being terraformed into an Earth like atmosphere with a view to total colonisation. A team of cops are sent to a mining town to collect the wanted murderer James 'Desolate' Williams (Ice Cube), however upon arrival the cops find a lot of the township dead, hanging from the ceiling & decapitated in some sort of ritualistic killing spree. The remaining townspeople have been possessed by the spirits of Martians & the Martians are using their bodies to kill all humans & reclaim Mars back for themselves, the teams Commander (Pam Grier) is killed so second in command Lt. Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) takes control. Somehow she decides she has to stop the Martian ghosts before they spread any further...
Co-written & directed by John Carpenter who also provided the score this has taken a lot of flak but I have to say I really rather enjoyed it. The script by Carpenter & Larry Sulkis has an unusual narrative & structure as the story is presented & told through various flashbacks & from different character's perspectives which I really liked, it almost works perfectly but flashbacks within flashbacks don't help & despite the way it's initially set up as a mystery it's a bit predictable & it's a story which could have been told in a more conventional manner & still been essentially the same film. It moves along at a decent pace, I certainly never got bored with it, the character's are rather clichéd & the dialogue nothing special but I liked everyone in the film all the same & thought they were better fleshed out than a lot of horror films I can think of. The Martian threat isn't really that inspiring, they are just possessed humans who want to kill everyone else in sight & once it had finished I got the impression it couldn't quite make it's mind up whether it wanted to be a taught claustrophobic horror flick like Halloween (1978) or an overblown Starship Troopers (1997) sci-fi shoot-em-up, to be honest I quite liked the compromise & thought Ghosts of Mars worked perfectly well as both. Having said that I didn't like the ending that much.
Maybe the reason people hit on Ghosts of Mars so much is because the expectations of director Carpenter, well all I'll say is what expectations because he hadn't made a classic horror flick since The Thing (1982) although They Live (1988) & Vampires (1998) deserve a mention as being fine films. To be honest I didn't associate it with Carpenter at all & just enjoyed it for what it is on it's own merits, being able to watch it for free on cable TV also helps a lot as if I'd actually spent good money on it my thoughts may have been different! There's not much gore here, there are a few good looking decapitations & severed heads, some self mutilation including huge pins through cheeks & a severed arm.
With a supposed budget of about $28,000,000 this had a decent amount of money spent on it, it looks very good, has high production values & is well made. Apparently filmed entirely at night. A lot of the location work was done at a gypsum mine in New Mexico, the gypsum which is pure white was sprayed with red food dye to create the Martian landscape. Actress Henstridge replaced Courtney Love mere weeks before filming began because she broke her foot when her boyfriends ex-wife ran over it in a car! There are a few familiar faces amongst the supporting cast & they all do a good job.
Ghosts of Mars is a much better film than I had been expecting, in fact after a dull looking theatrical trailer & lots of negative reviews I was expecting the worst but I ended up really enjoying it for what it was. One of Carpenter's better efforts from the past 20 odd years.
Co-written & directed by John Carpenter who also provided the score this has taken a lot of flak but I have to say I really rather enjoyed it. The script by Carpenter & Larry Sulkis has an unusual narrative & structure as the story is presented & told through various flashbacks & from different character's perspectives which I really liked, it almost works perfectly but flashbacks within flashbacks don't help & despite the way it's initially set up as a mystery it's a bit predictable & it's a story which could have been told in a more conventional manner & still been essentially the same film. It moves along at a decent pace, I certainly never got bored with it, the character's are rather clichéd & the dialogue nothing special but I liked everyone in the film all the same & thought they were better fleshed out than a lot of horror films I can think of. The Martian threat isn't really that inspiring, they are just possessed humans who want to kill everyone else in sight & once it had finished I got the impression it couldn't quite make it's mind up whether it wanted to be a taught claustrophobic horror flick like Halloween (1978) or an overblown Starship Troopers (1997) sci-fi shoot-em-up, to be honest I quite liked the compromise & thought Ghosts of Mars worked perfectly well as both. Having said that I didn't like the ending that much.
Maybe the reason people hit on Ghosts of Mars so much is because the expectations of director Carpenter, well all I'll say is what expectations because he hadn't made a classic horror flick since The Thing (1982) although They Live (1988) & Vampires (1998) deserve a mention as being fine films. To be honest I didn't associate it with Carpenter at all & just enjoyed it for what it is on it's own merits, being able to watch it for free on cable TV also helps a lot as if I'd actually spent good money on it my thoughts may have been different! There's not much gore here, there are a few good looking decapitations & severed heads, some self mutilation including huge pins through cheeks & a severed arm.
With a supposed budget of about $28,000,000 this had a decent amount of money spent on it, it looks very good, has high production values & is well made. Apparently filmed entirely at night. A lot of the location work was done at a gypsum mine in New Mexico, the gypsum which is pure white was sprayed with red food dye to create the Martian landscape. Actress Henstridge replaced Courtney Love mere weeks before filming began because she broke her foot when her boyfriends ex-wife ran over it in a car! There are a few familiar faces amongst the supporting cast & they all do a good job.
Ghosts of Mars is a much better film than I had been expecting, in fact after a dull looking theatrical trailer & lots of negative reviews I was expecting the worst but I ended up really enjoying it for what it was. One of Carpenter's better efforts from the past 20 odd years.