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I love John Carpenter but I can’t say that love extends
to “Ghosts of Mars” and awful movie and, sadly, the last
one to date that Carpenter has made. “Ghosts” is a return
to Carpenter’s B-movie roots without the creativity that
made his early films so memorable. “Ghosts” is essentially
a zombie movie set on Mars. Someone is snacking on the residents
of the Red Planet and a group of military folks led by Melanie
Ballard (Natasha Henstridge). She has to partner with a
criminal (Ice Cube)and an unlikely crew of experienced marines.
***
It’s sad that a director as talented as Carpenter went
out with this gruesome, awful effort. In the past Carpenter
would borrow from directors that inspired him like John
Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Don Siegel but make those moments
his own. Here Carpenter borrows from himself echoing some
of the set pieces from his strongest films and they come
across as stuff made by a second rate Carpenter fan. About
the only thing original here is the film score written and
performed by Anthrax. ---
Image & Sound:
“Ghosts of Mars” looks surprisingly good which makes
this train wreck even sadder in my mind because as I write
this some of Carpenter’s best films (aside from “The Thing”)
haven’t shown up on Blu-ray so for his WORST effort to appear
before, say, “Elvis” (which has never shown up on DVD to
the best of my knowledge), “Escape from New York” is just
wrong. Colors are bright. Detail is solid throughout. ***
The 5.1 TrueHD surround mix sounds solid enough with
dialog front and center. ---
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