Ghosts Of Mars Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

If every other directors’ films in the 1980s sucked, that decade would have still been pretty awesome movie-going wise, all thanks, to one man- John Carpenter! From the atmospheric “The Fog”, to the brilliant action of “Escape From New York”, to one of the greatest horror films of all-time “The Thing”, to the hilarious fun of “Big Trouble In Little China”, Carpenter owned that decade in a way no other director did. But then in the 1990s, his filmography began giving diminishing returns. All this culminated in the movie that took him away from directing for damn near a decade- “Ghosts Of Mars”. So, how hard did the mighty fall?

 

Normally, this would be where I give a brief overview of the plot, and then get to the review proper. However, we’re going to shake things up a bit, and leave the worst for last. Ice Cube stars as “Desolation” Williams, a hardened criminal who is up for multiple charges of murder. His ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude and wry smile make him one of three actors that seem to know the kind of movie they are in. Cube acquits himself solidly during the numerous action sequences, and is clearly having fun portraying such a ridiculously callous fellow- despite being innocent of the murders, the victims don’t bother him and he jokes at their expense. Natasha Henstridge plays Lt. Ballard, and is just as good. She brings an authentic world weariness, and it is clear she just wants to get by. She never overplays the addicted, drugged out moments, which is nice, considering the overwrought, melodramatic editing during those scenes. Finally, Jason Statham has a supporting role as one of the soldiers, and his natural charisma just leaps off the screen. Also, he is the funniest, most relatable character.

Unfortunately, as far acting goes, that is all the praise I can give. Pam Grier (portraying Commander Braddock) sounds bored throughout her limited screen time, the very definition of a paycheck gig. Clea DuVall (as Bashira Kincaid), who has been so excellent in such diverse fare as “Passengers” and “Identity”, continually looks confused and out of place. Every line she utters sounds false, as if she just had to translate them quickly from another language. And this leads me to Big Daddy Mars, played by Richard Cetrone- A) The character’s name is actually Big Daddy Mars, B) this isn’t a porno, and C) yeah, this is that kind of stupid movie, where the lead villain gets a name as indescribably idiotic as Big Daddy Mars. Cetrone hams it up to eleven, but instead of being menacing or creepy or threatening, he comes across as hilarious! The movie gets dumber every time he mugs his way through a scene. However, “Ghosts Of Mars” also gets proportionally more amusing the longer and stupider it becomes.

 

Each and every set, prop, miniature, and matte painting look fake. The opening train pulling up to the major Mars metropolis, Chryse City, looks like an exuberant ten year-old took his/ her model train, a red lens gel for his/ her parents’ camcorder, and then filmed the train moving around its track for a few minutes. I wish I were kidding, but this $28 million budgeted film opens with one of the fakest, most obvious looking train models I have ever seen put to film. Twenty seconds in, and the laughs have already started. The Martian landscape is so clearly a set that being enveloped in the world the movie has created is a virtual impossibility. There’s a smallness to the world that is hard to put into words, but everything seems so confined together and cluttered, that it looks like the filmmakers only had use of one soundstage, for a very short amount of time. The buildings are so obviously models, they would have looked more convincing if they were just cardboard cutouts.

 

The computer generated effects, which are thankfully sparse, are just as riotously laugh inducing as the sets. Well, that is not entirely true- there is a weird dancing design from Henstridge’s pendant that doesn’t look too bad, but aside from that, yeah, this CGI is awful. During a weird flashback, for reasons of unknown stupidity, all of the native Martians somehow got buried, and sealed in a tomb- or at the very least their spirits did, but this movie is so poorly written, I am not exactly sure of the specifics- and that seal, which is the entire entrance to the tomb, mind you, looks worse than anything seen in the (by when this movie was released) six years old “Johnny Mnemonic”.

 

The cinematography is bland, and the editing fails to create any kind of mood, atmosphere, or tension, but at least Carpenter is too competent to do the basics poorly. Save for the moments when Henstridge gets high- in which a double exposed, layover inset of the ocean, which somehow means she’s drugged out. I don’t get it myself, nor do I understand how her getting high while possessed by one of the ghosts gives her flashbacks to their motivations, and then expels the entity from the host, which can live without taking over mortal beings, so why do the poorly rendered red, CGI mist that represents the ghosts ever bother to take over something they know can be easily destroyed (more on the possession stuff in a bit)?

 

Alright, I have put off the inevitably heinous for long enough, let’s dissect the movie’s plot:

 

Set in the far flung future of 2176, Mars has been colonized and is nearly finished being terraformed- despite what year it claims to be in, nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing about the look, design, feel, or any other such thing demarcates this as being in the twenty-second century. Regular, plain old scissors abound! Prisons, on damned Mars (where all of the movie takes place), still use 1980s CCTV-esque cameras to keep an eye on the inmates there. Say what? How is this taking place over 150 years from now and yet using technology that was on its way out before the movie ever hit production. The soldiers carry slightly modified machine guns, and when I have seen more advanced technology in an episode of the non-future set show “Archer” (which is as awesome as this movie is stupid), I believe that to be a rather glaring issue. Had this film been set in say, 2076, I would be utterly okay with all of this, as that is in the future enough for mankind to maybe have colonized Mars (and suspension of disbelief would cover the rest), and yet still use some basic twentieth century items. The sad part here is just how good Carpenter has previously proven himself in creating believable, engaging worlds. His own 1981 “Escape From New York” is set in the now-past of 1997, but even to this day, it has a futuristic feel, despite that, and yet, somehow the fairly distant future seems even more dated!

 

Anyway, the toy train pulls into the main station of Chyrse City, on autopilot, with only one person aboard- a wounded Lt. Ballard. Once she has healed enough, a hearing is held to determine what happened to the rest of her team (this is not a trial at all, but more of an information gathering thing). The point of this framing device eludes me entirely. Carpenter seems to use it as an excuse to only show what the main character either saw first hand, or was told second hand. So, the movie will rewind to a specific point every now and then, and veer off to follow what X person told Henstridge. But, if you dropped the whole inquiry bit, and just told the story chronologically, and still employed the wipe edits and cuts already used throughout the film for each second hand story, the audience would still know that those moments were happening at the same time as Henstridge doing her thing!

 

The story proper starts off with our heroes (used very loosely), hitching a ride on a mining transport train (the same fake train from the opening shots), to pick up Desolation from the small prison there and escort him back to Chryse City. While killing time, we are treated to Henstridge taking her drug of choice (I don’t recall its name, and don’t care enough to look it up), and the first of the two god awful tripping moments. Waterfalls! Rolling waves! Poor double exposure! All hilarious!

 

They arrive, and it is a Friday night, but the mining outpost is deserted. This worries them, so they head off in teams to search and seek answers. During this time, Grier, Henstridge, and Statham see a man that has holed himself up in a transport vehicle. He yells at them to not open the vehicle, and then kills himself. Immediately after this, Grier sees something just on the horizon and goes to investigate. WTF? She leaves, on her own, in an obviously dangerous situation. How the…? What the…? Of course, this leads to her being killed… off the bloody screen! Pam Grier, Pam-freaking-Grier, gets unceremoniously killed offscreen! There are no words for how terrible an idea that is!

 

Henstridge finds Cube still behind bars, and realizes that he couldn’t be responsible for all this mayhem. In order for everyone to survive, they make an uneasy pact and meet up with the other soldiers. At this point, Statham shows up with three survivors in tow, who have firsthand experience with craziness immediately following the other miners getting possessed- the possessed shake back and forth a little, create scars and blood designs all over their bodies, and then massacre anyone not possessed. When a possessed person dies, the ghost that was inhabiting them does not; it turns back into bad CGI, flits, flies, and flutters around searching for another acceptable host to enter. Its criteria for this seems flimsy though, as it is not just any nearby human, and I have no clue why that is! Yes, the script is so incompetent that building up how the bad guys operate, and by which rules, is too much of a task for the film. This causes the copious action scenes to be so insultingly idiotic, I am half convinced that it was done on purpose by Carpenter just to see what he could sneak past the studio heads. There are two major action numbers, each running a decent length, in which a plethora of baddies get killed, but the ghosts from the recently slain don’t even attempt to take over a new body. There are about four takeover moments during its whole 100 minute runtime, which means that the ghosts can’t takeover certain people (or at least people in a certain frame of mind), but wouldn’t you know it? It can’t be bothered to explain or even hint at how this is possible.

 

Basically, the rest of the film is our heroes trying to find out how to survive/ skirmish battles, and every once in awhile one of them will get possessed. At one point, Henstridge is the victim. Noticing the tells, Cube and Statham put her outside, and give her a hit from her stash. For inexplicable reasons of confusingness, being high while possessed unveils the Martians entire history and motivation. The context only serves to make our heroes look like assholes- once unpossessed, yet another happy side effect of being high (this one more sensible), she explains what she saw, and then states the the Martians view “humans as the invading species” (because no shit, Sherlock), but that Mars “isn’t their- the Martians- planet anymore”. She then cocks her gun. Ladies and gentlemen, our heroes! Genocidal, drug addicted soldiers and hardened criminals!

 

Because of movie logic, in order to destroy the ghosts, they decide to explode a mini-nuclear reactor. Somehow theorizing that the force and radiation of the blast would destroy the red mist. Spoiler alert, it does not and at the end, Cube reteams with Henstridge, as they get ready to defend Chryse City. Which makes the whole story pointless, as nothing as accomplished!

 

Since the release of this movie in 2001, John Carpenter has created only one more theatrical release, nine years later. As much as I love him, “Ghosts Of Mars” is so hilariously inept, that of course it killed his career! A movie this terribly fun, from a director as gifted as Carpenter, seems implausible, but this is so dumb, so ridiculous, and so confusing, that laughing through it is the only one to maintain a modicum of sanity.