...this film sounds a lot like Mad Max Heads for the Angry Red Planet on a Pitch Black Night of the Living Dead.
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Any new motion picture from director John Carpenter is cause for hopeful anticipation, but it´s been a long wait without a hit since "Halloween" (1978), "Escape from New York" (1981), "The Thing" (1982), and "Starman" (1984). "Ghosts of Mars" (2001) still leaves us waiting.
The year is 2176 A.D. The place is Mars, which now has a close to Earth-like atmosphere thanks to something called "terraforming," although it continues to be a dark, desolate, forbidding place. Some 640,000 colonists live there, for reasons unclear. And their society is matriarchal, also for reasons unclear. Anyway, as the movie opens we´re told, "...something that had been buried for centuries has just been uncovered; and as this mysterious force moves cross the southern valley, it leaves behind only silence and death." It takes only a few minutes of screen time for us to learn what this "mysterious force" is: They are ancient Martian spirits, of course, unleashed, whose sole object in whatever it is they call their life is to protect their planet against invaders. They kill without question or mercy and take over the bodies of their victims.
OK, I know what you´re thinking. In physical appearance and story idea this film sounds a lot like "Mad Max Heads for the Angry Red Planet on a Pitch Black Night of the Living Dead." You´re not far wrong. Mind you, I don´t object to movies that are derivative, everything is based on a little something that´s been done before, but I do object to a movie that is as blatantly imitative as this one is and that adds nothing worthy of its own invention. Carpenter´s early films were hardly original, but they were imaginative and often filled with fresh new approaches to old material. In "Ghosts of Mars," the plot, the characters, the cinematography, even the camera filters are old hat.
Natasha Henstridge ("Species") stars as Lt. Melanie Ballard, a tough, edgy, sometimes angry Mars police officer who tells most of the story in flashback. This flashback narration, I might add, diminishes the suspense considerably, since we know from the start who´s going to live and who´s going to die. In fact, there is virtually no suspense in any part of the film. Ice Cube ("Boyz N the Hood," "Three Kings") costars as Desolation Williams, an accused murderer and petty crook whom Ballard and her crew are assigned to pick up at a mining camp and transport back to headquarters for trial. Ice Cube receives top billing for more reasons unclear, despite the fact that the movie is clearly centered on Henstridge.
Also in on the action are Pam Grier ("Coffy," "Jackie Brown") as Helena Braddock, the hard-nosed officer in charge; Jason Statham ("Snatch") as Sgt. Jericho Butler, Ballard´s horny aide; Clea Duval ("The Faculty") as Barshira Kincaid, yet another beautiful, young police woman; and Joanna Cassidy ("Blade Runner," "Under Fire") as Dr. Arlene Whitlock, a science officer the others pick up hiding out in the mining camp. She has good reason to be hiding; the whole mining camp has been wiped out, murdered by the Martian ghosts, the bodies of the victims now inhabited by the spirits. Since there´s no character development, not even a smidgen of background material, and zero charisma among any of heroes, we don´t really much care what happens to them, again diluting any possible suspense that might have developed in a better script.
Needless to say, the whole movie is a dreary affair. The spirit zombies who take over human bodies immediately mutilate themselves, for yet further reasons unclear, and wind up looking like eighties´ punk rockers. Their leader looks like something out of a heavy metal band. The landscape is dark, dusty, and murky, shrouded in gloom, as all of these apocalytic-type films seem to depict the future, and everything is photographed through a series of brown and orange filters. Worse still, the fight scenes are lifeless and stagey, and the special effects and miniatures look exactly like what they are--special effects and miniatures. Expect blood and violence as a substitute for tension and terror, and you´ll find that here, too: severed arms, decapitation, throat slitting, face slicing, death in every grisly way imaginable and none of it in the least bit scary. Finally, all of the proceedings are tied up in what sounds like the same musical score that Carpenter himself has composed for most of his recent films. It´s loud, pulsating, repetitious, bizarre, and ultimately nerve-wracking.
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