Ghosts of Mars, John Carpenter's second-to-last film, was a box-office and critical flop when it hit theaters 25 years ago today. The 2001 movie stars Natasha Henstridge (Species) as Lt. Melanie Ballard, part of a squad of police officers sent to a remote mining outpost on a terraformed, colonized Mars, circa 2176, to pick up a convicted criminal named James “Desolation” Williams (Ice Cube). When they arrive, they find that most of the outpost’s inhabitants have been slaughtered by the spirits of long-extinct native Martians, who can possess human bodies and plan to wipe out the intruders.
A mashup of the director’s favorite genres — the Western, sci-fi, the siege thriller — Ghosts of Mars revisits aspects of Carpenter gems like Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing, and The Fog with mixed results. Henstridge, Ice Cube, and a young Jason Statham are all fun to watch, but the visual effects (on a relatively meager $28 million budget) don’t hold up well, and the film suffers from a distinct lack of energy. It does, however, have unique touches, like the way the story unfolds in a nesting-doll series of flashbacks within flashbacks, and the idea that human society on Mars is matriarchal.
