"Ghosts of Mars" is widely considered as displaying Carpenter at his absolute worst, and while I went into it with an open mind, it's difficult for me to imagine him topping it in terms of badness. I mean, "The Ward" was crap, but "Ghosts of Mars" is one of those films that just kind of hurts you while you watch it. It's not an instant, excruciating pain, but it is a slow turn of a screw that keeps digging something into your back, making the sit more and more uncomfortable the longer it goes on. And by the end you're just wishing it would stop and put itself out of your misery.
The film stars Natasha Henstridge as a cop on Mars who is sent with her unit to transport a murder suspect back to town from an outlying mining colony. Her unit contains both Pam Grier and Jason Statham in one of his earlier roles, so there is a bit of star power at work. True it's also got Clea DuVall acting like she's on quaaludes dragging down the talent, but any movie that stars both Foxy Brown and Turkish has at least a little bit going for it.
Wot's 'appening wiff dem sausages, Foxy?
And then they reach the town, which is deserted sans the mutilated dead bodies hanging all over the place as if they've wandered onto the set of "Predator." Going to the jail, they meet their assignment, a man by the name of Desolation Williams (snicker) played by the Master of Scowling himself, Ice Cube. Believe it or not I have found Ice Cube to be entertaining on occasion, but this was not one of those moments. In "Ghosts of Mars" he's pretty much checked all of his limited acting talent at the door and gives a performance that you'd expect from a rapper turned actor. I don't know if he wasn't having a good time on set or something, but there's nothing to him except just being a guy who sneers a lot, shoots guns and says every line like a jock who was cast in a high school play and is really pissed about it.
Desolation and the cops are quickly accosted by a large mob of colonists who have gone insane, as we find out that spirits of alien beings have possessed them, and have been killing everything in sight. There's an interesting element to them, since once the body they're inhabiting is killed, they are free to move to another host and possess them. This means that generally speaking, killing them is a bad idea since their spirit can still get you afterwards. But then again these incorporeal beings apparently can't move through walls or doors or glass and can only move very slowly so I'm not sure how the crap that all works. The important thing to remember is that for some reason the spirits turn people into Uruk-Hai.
"Whom do you serve?"
"Sarumaaaaaaan!"
That's a fine enough setup I suppose, and it could have made for an entertaining film, but there are a number of factors at work with prevent that from happening. First and foremost is the fact that "Ghost of Mars" looks unbelievably cheap. I'm serious, you have no idea how chintzy this movie looks. I'm all for actual sets and whatnot, but not when they're done so poorly and lit so as to look like everything around the actors is made of cardboard. It's difficult to describe without you having seen it, but whenever they're outside there's no depth to anything on screen, and it looks like you're watching the characters faff about on the "Ghosts of Mars" Action Playset. Or maybe a better way to put it is that it looks like you're watching a taped production of a stage play. It's really bad.
Apart from the bad sets and the TERRIBLE CG they had going on, which are bad for even 90's CG standards, there are some truly bizarre choices that were made in the editing room which makes the entire film teeth-grindingly aggravating to watch. Nearly every single transition between scenes - NEARLY EVERY SINGLE ONE - is a dissolve fade, an edit which is normally associated with some passage of time. However the passage of time between edits in the film is sometimes as little as a couple of seconds, like when characters move from one room to another.
Get used to this.
On top of that the film makes heavy use of using a dissolve fade when most films would simply use a normal cut within the scene itself. So you'll have situations when you're watching a character walking from one end of the room to the other via two or three of these dissolves, giving off the impression that he is fading in and out to move. I have never seen this technique used before to that extent, but I tell you I hope to never see it used like this again. It's horrendously distracting and completely asinine, and the guy who edited this film needs to be punched in the face.
And don't get me started on the chronology which is as fractured as season four of "Arrested Development." The entire story is told in flashbacks, being narrated by a person who could not possibly be relating the events to anyone considering she was not present during many of them, and the people who did experience them are all dead. So how could she be describing what they saw or did? I guess the character had a copy of the script.
You know what this movie is? This is an Uwe Boll film. I'm dead serious. This is something you'd see from Uwe Boll. And not even more recent "slightly competent" Uwe Boll. This is "Bloodrayne" or "House of The Dead" or "Alone In The Dark" here. This is amateur, cheap, lazy, cheesy, "I did this for the tax write-off" schlock. And it was made by the same guy who did "The Thing." I am saddened and stunned by that revelation.
This was just a test-run for "In The Name of The King."
This summer...in a world...where trailer cliches are king...one man...will make a stand...unlike anything you've ever seen before...
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Ghosts of Mars" is terrible. It's cheap looking, it's boring, and it's poorly acted despite having a handful of legitimate talent. About the only decent thing is the Anthrax penned soundtrack, which manages to be fairly metal. It doesn't make the movie work, but it's nice to know the band got a paycheck.
