Fairaher
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
Suman Roberson
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Paynbob
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
tomgillespie2002
Over the course of a career spanning over 50 years, writer, director and producer John Carpenter has been responsible for some of the most memorable and iconic horror/thriller movies ever made. The likes of Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York and The Thing have cemented his status as a genre icon, up there with the likes of George A. Romero and Wes Craven as one of America's finest horror visionaries. His legacy cannot be damaged, although it appeared that Carpenter was trying his best to sully his own reputation between 1996 and 2001 with three utter stinkers. First came Escape from L.A. and that surfing scene, and then the underwhelming Vampires, which wasted a perfectly game James Woods in what was an instantly forgettable and generic undead actioner. Then people thought he had lost the plot completely when he produced Ghosts of Mars, one of the worst movies to be released in 2001.Over a century into the future, Mars is undergoing terraforming, and a matriarchal society of humans have settled on the red planet in the hope of better opportunities. Life is far from peaceful however, and crime is rife in the various remote mining communities. A crew of police officers including Lieutenant Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) are tasked with transporting notorious prisoner (and the amusingly named) Desolation Williams (Ice Cube) to stand trial for a spate of gruesome murders he is accused of. When they arrive in town, the place is deserted, and it doesn't take long until they stumble on a number of mutilated dead bodies hanging from the ceiling in macabre fashion. Ballard and the rest of the group, which is also made up of rapey Sergeant Jericho (Jason Statham) and token lesbian Braddock (Pam Grier), split up to investigate further and locate Desolation. As they plough on, they learn of an alien force with the ability to possess humans and no love for their planet's new colonisers.Anyone who was alive and watching movies in the late 1990s will know that Mars is no place to visit unless you wish to be set upon by a gruesome native. Ghosts of Mars is no different, but the film never feels terribly sure of what the threat actually is. Carpenter throws just about everything at the screen: ghosts, zombies, steampunk rovers, blood, guts, and even some train action. It's a muddle of ideas taken from far better films, including some of Carpenter's very own. It's Assault on Precinct 13 meets The Thing, with a sprinkling of The Fog, but without any of their style, thrills or flair. When the characters stop aiming at each other and have a chat, the dialogue is clunky and fuelled by exposition. Henstridge tries her best with a role that could champion equality if the film didn't insist she takes her clothes off, and the usually reliable Ice Cube and Statham fail to squeeze any life of their stock characters, who never rise above foul-mouthed ghetto survivor and smug sleazebag, respectively. It's a horror show from start to finish, but not the kind you would expect from Carpenter. The years haven't been kind either, reducing Ghosts of Mars to SY-FY Channel-level drivel.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
a_chinn
John Carpenters second to last theatrical film is an entertaining sci-fi remake of his early classic film "Assault of Predict 13," but is sadly nowhere as thrilling or as original as his best films. The film's story was originally going to be a third Snake Plissken film titled "Escape from Mars" with the exact same story and Plissken in the Desolation Williams role, but with the box office failure of "Escape from L.A." that plan was scrapped. Instead, this film features a terraformed Mars run by women in a matriarchal society when dangerous criminal Desolation Williams, Ice Cube, is supposed to be transported out of the mining colony by tough cop Natasha Henstridge. What goes wrong is that the ghosts of dead martians are accidentally released, who then possess the colony's miners, leading them to lay siege to the few surviving humans, which includes cops Henstridge, Jason Statham, Clea DuVall, and Pam Grier, who have put trust in master criminal Ice Cube in order to survive. In the miss column for the film, the special effects are disappointingly cheap, it's missing director Carpenter's trademark suspense and instead focuses on action, and the film in general seems to have too ambitious of a scope for it's limited budget. However, in the plus column, the film does feature a cool cast, music by Carpenter and Anthrax, and does feature Carpenter's trademark Howard Hawksian storytelling callbacks. Although this is certainly one of Carpenter's weaker films, it's still not all that bad of a film and is still entertaining.
mwidunn-95-631875
Where to begin on this one: Natasha Henstridge's hair? Ice Cube's flabby belly (which is kept hidden) or short stature (which can't be)? Statham's deplorable acting? The explosions that keep coming out of nowhere and for no reason? The Leader of the pack of possessed miners who can only howl, "Roh-roh-rah," . . . and, everyone seems to understand him? The (apparent) use of stand-in's in a fight scene with no make-up or costuming? The appearance hundreds of possessed miners on cue, when needed, when maybe only fifty were possessed in the first place (and, had already killed all of the -- more numerous -- inhabitants of the outpost)?The fact that the whole film's premise revolves around Henstridge's character, in full uniform, getting de-briefed in meticulous detail by some committee of Officers about the events at the outpost, while we know that she clearly needs medical attention to a deep laceration in one of her legs.A dumb, stupid, and moronic film. Maybe, so bad, it's good???
sol-
Set in a future in which humankind has colonised and terraformed Mars, a Martian police officer recalls the supernatural circumstances by which her entire squad disappeared, leaving her handcuffed, after a mission to escort a criminal went sour in this John Carpenter movie. The film has a reputation as one of Carpenter's weakest efforts, but it is a step up from 'The Ward' and, as usual, Carpenter establishes mood and atmosphere well. The central mystery is decent too and the abandoned Martian village that the policeman and her unit encounter is quite spooky. It has been compared to an Old West ghost town and there is an added tinge of danger in the air with all the unearthly red dust/dirt and gloomy Martian skies. Unfortunately the film does little beyond this to maximise the awe and wonder of the setting; the planet is so massively terraformed that gravity, air and water do not pose any restrictions. As such, it often feels like the story could have been easily set on Earth without losing anything. The narrative structure is also irksome. Not only is 90% of the film told in flashback, but there are also flashbacks within the flashbacks, which leads to the film feeling massively dragged out despite an under 100 minute length. The action scenes are pretty one-note too. And yet, there are still moments when Carpenter's genius shines through; the first person point-of-view possession scenes are very well done, for instance. This is not a great film by any means, but neither is it quite the turkey one that might expect for a film that put its director off movie-making for nearly a decade.
