Ghosts of Mars
April 2002 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Ever watch a film and wonder why the film was ever made? Ever think to yourself how completely pointless a plot can be? Watching John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars had both questions circling my mind. Despite being technically competent, it’s the kind of movie that doesn’t make you laugh, doesn’t make you cry, and, quite ironically, doesn’t make you recoil in horror.

The story is told in a flashback as Lieutenant Melanie Ballard recalls the fate of her police squad when they’re asked to transport a prisoner from a mining colony on the planet Mars. Ice Cube plays the prisoner Desolation Williams who is being held for mutilating innocent town folk. He, like most misunderstood antiheros, is innocent, but the story makes no attempts to conceal his innocence, or even toy with the idea that Desolation could be the bad guy. Instead the real bad guys are a bunch of possessed miners whose bodies are hosts to the ghosts of Mars. Sound scary to you? Well, the miners haven’t been turned into vampires or ghouls, nor do they possess any real supernatural powers. Bottom line: these second-rate Night of the Living Dead wannabes aren’t scary or threatening -- unless of course their victims are hobbled and can’t walk. Without a powerful and threatening entity, there’s no tension. Without tension there is no cause for the audience to feel fear or concern for the good guys’ well being. Then again who in this flaccid cast has the screen presence or depth of character to be a "good guy?" Natasha Henstridge (Species) is wooden, Jason Stratham (Snatch) is forgettable, and the rest of the cast may as well be wearing red shirts.

As a technical exercise the film isn’t as bad. The soundtrack is good, if not unique, in its use of surrounds and sound effects. Images were red, but also relatively clean and sharp. There were some MPEG artifacts popping up here and there when movement within the frame got a bit complicated, but for the most part the quality was pretty good for a "B" film (and I use the label very loosely).

Special features were about as uninteresting and boring as the film. The video documentary conveyed a feeling of by-the-numbers filmmaking, while a featurette about how they scored the film could have been left on the cutting room floor. To be honest I didn’t bother listening to the commentary by Director Carpenter and Ms. Henstridge because frankly getting a good night’s rest took priority.

Lambasting aside, I typically like John Carpenter’s films -- even the bad ones (They Live comes to mind). I even saw Vampires on my Halloween wedding day. But where many John Carpenter films have the virtue of being intensely creepy and visually disturbing, Ghosts of Mars fails miserably as anything even resembling campy horror. You want John Carpenter doing camp? Go rent Big Trouble in Little China. You want John Carpenter doing creepy? Watch The Thing. You want to watch Carpenter executing this plot the right way? Watch the classic Assault on Precinct 13.

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