Subject: Review: Ghosts of Mars (2001)

From: Susan Granger <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 20:55:47 -0000

Susan Granger's review of "GHOSTS OF MARS" (Sony Pictures Entertainment)
              Horror auteur John Carpenter ("Halloween," "Vampires") strikes out
with this sci-fi eco-fable that's so bad it boggles the mind to imagine how the
project ever got green-lit. The script by Carpenter and Larry Sulkis appears to
have been lifted directly from last year's "Pitch Black," involving a violent
prisoner who must be released from bondage so that he can help a small band of
humans protect themselves from blood-thirsty, marauding aliens. In the year
2176, there are 640,000 Earthlings on Mars, living in a matriarchal society led
by a Commander, played by Pam Grier. Grier, pill-poppin' Natasha Henstridge, and
some rookie Mars Police officers (Clea Duvall, Jason Statham) travel to the
remote mining town of Shining Canyon to fetch "Desolation" Williams - that's Ice
Cube - to bring him back to Chryse City to stand trial for murder. But when
they're besieged by demented, zombie-like, body-snatching miners, they readily
free the scowling Ice Cube since they need him for protection. It seems a red
cloud was released from a Shining Canyon cave and, soon after, most of the
miners went bonkers as long-dormant remnants of an ancient Martian civilization
took over their minds and bodies, lopping off heads as "vengeance for anything
that tries to lay claim to their planet," according to a scientist (Joanna
Cassidy). Carpenter uses so many flashbacks to tell the "Night of the Living
Dead"-like story that the idiotic plot gets incomprehensibly confusing. But you
can easily predict each of the supporting characters who will be killed, along
with the order of their elimination. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10,
"Ghosts of Mars" thuds to a laborious, bottom-of-the-barrel 1. Perhaps, indeed,
there is a curse on Mars films, if you recall two other duds: "Mission to Mars"
and "Red Planet."

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X-RAMR-ID: 29444
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 249038
X-RT-TitleID: 1109551
X-RT-SourceID: 742
X-RT-AuthorID: 1274
X-RT-RatingText: 1/10