re:mote voices

Title: John Carpenter’s Ghosts Of Mars

Cast: Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Stratham, Clea Duvall, Pam Grier

Director: John Carpenter

At one point John Carpenter may well have been something. When there weren’t necessarily as many people to compete against. I don’t know. But these days John Carpenter has the decency to put his name before his films title. While it may describe a certain level of egotism, it does allow an audience fair warning as to how bad a film is going to be. And it is fair to say, having caught Ghosts Of Mars on TV, that it is a particularly bad film. But then with a cast like Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Stratham Pam Grier and Clea Duvall – it is hardly surprising.

Henstridge recounts events to a council as a survivor of mysterious attacks. As a member of a Martian police force, she went down to a frontier, mining town, to retrieve Ice Cube for trial for a series of brutal murders. However on arrival, the police force find a ghost town – a series of mutilated bodies, with Ice Cube still locked in his jail cell. As things go on we have the revelations of some mysterious Martian relic which has been disturbed and is now possessing the settlers.

There are some nice touches – the acknowledgement of partial terraforming, and there is a certain something to the core idea. However the way everything comes together could be described as the dumbing down of any potential there may have been. Opting instead for an action spectacle – revolving around an enemy force obsessed with body modification and ritual to a degree that guarantees visual impact. Add to that lots of big guns and big explosions and you have a formula.