Fantasmas de Marte de John Carpenter

Packing a badass cast & good dose of gore-filled action, John Carpenter's penultimate film (to date) features an interesting premise and even set things up well in the beginning but once the main plot takes over, the script shortcomings start to surface as dialogues go downhill, characters turn bland, acting takes a hit, VFX inadequacy is exposed, and the scare factor diminishes in its entirety. Not one of Carpenter's best but not a chore either, Ghosts of Mars still has an unabashed quality to it that makes the ride somewhat enjoyable despite the hammy acting & over-the-top execution.

Carpenter's films tend to age like fine wine. When they're released, they're lamblasted by critics and fans. Ten years later, they're classics; for instance, "The Thing", "Big Trouble in Little China", "They Live", "Prince of Darkness" -- and "Ghost of Mars" is no exception. This is a tremendously entertaining film that shouldn't be viewed as a horror film, but rather, as a tongue-in-cheek western, in the vain of the Spaghetti Westerns. You all have to pull your heads out and watch this film again...in about nine years. I'll bet you'll say, "You know what, that was a hell of a lot of fun." In the meantime, get off Carpenter's ass.

Sure, it's predictable. This is basically the same story as _Pitch Black_. And why is it that science fiction basically revolves around horror themes? It would be nice to see a really thought-provoking science fiction film that consisted of more than a motley group of people trying to escape from some monster. Given this, _Ghosts of Mars_ is really a pretty decent film and John Carpenter's best in some time.

I really wanted to like _Vampires_ and much of that was pretty good, but the small budget really hurt. Here, Carpent uses the budget limitations to positive effect. Most of the money apparently went for red dye for the ground. The buildings and "futuristic" train didn't require much. The story basically boils down to the basic stalk and slash as dozens of other "science fiction" films of recent vintage, but there isn't a lot of time wasted on extraneous plot.

The story is well-told, via a pretty complicated series of flashbacks and even flashbacks within flashbacks, as a group of gung-ho Martian police attempt to pick up a transport a prisoner, played by Ice Cube, only to discover that the mining station where he's being held has been overrun by the spirits of dead Martians, who inhabit their host bodies and make them do their bidding.

The story is also basically an updating of one of Carpenter's earliest films, _Assault on Precinct 13_. Along the way, there are intriguing glimpses at the matriarchical society that runs Mars, although it is never explained how or why things got to be this way. Carpenter supplies some neat music to the film's soundtrack as well. All in all, there are certainly worse ways to spend your money.

The wild-west inspiration is obvious.

It could just as easily have been made as a "regular" horror-western, and perhaps a remake/reimaging will make it so.

The sets are OK, the CGI is so-so.

The actors are doing a decent job and all in all, the film accomplishes what it sets out to do: A two-fisted action-romp with a splash of horror and gore.

It's not high art but it is silly fun and good enough for an evening along with popcorn and soda.

John Carpenter, together with Brian De Palma, are the only active directors who had created a body of work consisting of the representation of a particular, personal world, forged by the mixture of a number of themes and subjects, reinserted on tracks left by classic directors (Hawks and Hitchcock respectively). They make one single movie over and over again, reaching outstanding levels of accomplishment in style and coherence.

Thus `Ghost of Mars' is full of Carpenter's imaginary. The plot, the characters, the tone, everything can be linked to his previous work, most notably `Assault on Precint 13', that was yet a reworking of Hawks' `Rio Bravo'. And that's a significant point regarding this film: despite the zombies, the gore, the futuristic set-up, the red Martian atmosphere, the heavy metal score, `Ghost of Mars' is essentially a western in the most classic way. There is a train, a lawman (played by an actress), a group of deputies, a gang of bandits, a frontier town surrounded by the desert.

As in Hawks, the individuals work as a group, defined by codes of professional skill in a strictly masculine environment. Interestingly, Capenter portrays the Martian society as a matriarchy, but the elements operate the same way: the good guy and the bad guy differentiate from each other just for the fact that they are in opposite sides of the law, but are nevertheless exchangeable. Also, following Hawks' epic, the vulnerability of the hero is determined by a fault or weakness (Melanie's addiction to drugs is a progression of Dean Martin's alcoholism in Rio Bravo).

Told in a peculiar series of flashbacks from different points of view, and as in `Vampires', with the use of long, continual dissolves, the story introduces some original points, like the ghosts taking possession of human through the ears and Desolation's smart device to save Melanie with the aid of drugs. There are some plot holes, yes, some bad acting and gratuitous -though stylized- violence. But it's Carpenter unpretentious as ever, telling us how dark our future appears, not from a pulpit but from his director's chair. And I'm very grateful for his effort.