John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars (2001)

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

GENRE: GHOST, POSSESSION
SOURCE: STREAMING (HULU)

Two things certainly didn't occur to me when I made up approximately 12% of an opening weekend Saturday night showing of Ghosts of Mars (which dwindled to 33.3% by the time it reached its finale). One: that it would be the last time I got to roll up to any random multiplex to see a new John Carpenter movie*, and two: that it'd be over 20 years before I finally got around to giving it my long promised second chance. What seemed like a can't miss proposition of Carpenter applying his Assault on Precinct 13 "cops and crooks band together" plot but setting it on Mars and diving even deeper into his western stylings left me feeling cold or indifferent throughout most of its runtime, but after two decades I honestly couldn't remember what I disliked about it.

Or much about the movie at all, really. As it turns out, even my lone memory wasn't accurate (spoiler: all I "remembered" was Clea Duvall and Jason Statham both dying on the train on the way out, but it was actually running TO the train that they got offed), and very little came back as I watched, so it might as well have been for the first time. But it didn't take long to at least zero in on why the movie didn't work for me: the confusing, needless flashback structure that constantly undercuts the tension. It'd be fine if it was just bookend scenes of Natasha Henstridge telling her story to her skeptical superiors, one at the beginning and another at the end, but Carpenter repeatedly cuts back to them over and over, as if we may have forgotten that this was a flashback.

But I mean, would that have been so bad? The fact that she is presented as a "lone survivor" type has already weakened much of the film's potential for suspense, but maybe we could temporarily forget that most of her co-stars clearly weren't going to survive if not for the reminder every ten minutes or so. Worse, Henstridge's character herself arrives on Mars after a lot has happened, so even part of her flashback story is devoted to listening to the flashbacks of the handful of people who have survived thus far. I'm not saying a linear version of this movie would solve all of its problems, but I'd bet good money that it'd be much improved.

The plot also curiously involves the idea that Ice Cube's Desolation Williams (amazing name) may have been responsible for the dead bodies Henstridge and pals find, but by that point we already know it's something much more powerful, so it's a go nowhere plot point. Perhaps this stuff got re-edited some, because it also seems like Cube's introduction is pretty flat, as if there was a bigger entrance at one point that got chopped out and resulted in something less grandiose for the first time we see him. Either way, long story short the first half hour or so of the movie is a real mess, making too much work for the final hour to win us back.

And as you probably know, it doesn't quite succeed. Because the other issue with the movie is that it exacerbates something that hurt Vampires and Escape From LA as well: Carpenter's seeming disinterest in crafting tight action scenes. Rather than stage specific (scripted) action, he keeps doing this thing where he seemingly has each actor just run (or hangglide, in LA's case) around the set tossing grenades and stuff, then films a bunch of shots of stuntmen going flying through the air, and then puts it all together later to give the idea of a big chaotic sequence. Unfortunately, what ends up happening (at least for me) is that I can't really care about what's going on, because there's no real plot point driving anything forward, it's just a bunch of stuff happening for five minutes until they've run out of juice for the stuntmen's air rams. Say what you will about the surfing scene in LA - as dumb as it is, at least there's a cause and effect built into it and, thanks to Snake needing to catch up to Eddie, it does something to move the plot forward as well. Here, there's a sequence where the entire group runs for a train that isn't there, only to run right back to where they were! At least if they went to a different building it'd feel like some kind of plot momentum had occurred, but if not for a handful of minor character deaths during their pointless journey, you could cut it out entirely and it wouldn't even make a difference.

That leads to another big issue - nobody ever cares or even notices when their comrades die. Cube has a little bit of temporary sadness over his brother's death, but it passes quickly, and Henstridge and the others don't even blink when their partners are killed. Not that anyone has a great death; Duvall's is kind of funny because she ducks under a blade only to get decapitated by another as she rises back up, but without anyone else seeing it or having any kind of reaction, it doesn't mean much. It's almost like since we know Henstridge (and maybe Cube) were the only ones to live right from the start that Carpenter felt that there's no sense dwelling on their deaths, but it'd be nice if their friends could at least shout a "Noooo!" or something to give it a tiny bit of meaning. It also undercuts the "enemies teaming up" premise when he kills off all of Cube's guys within about 30 seconds of each other, long before the conclusion, so it's basically Henstridge's team with a rando who happens to be a criminal.

He also frequently employs dissolves to move things along, more than once just chucking out part of a shot. It's a trick that works on occasion (think Desperado with Antonio making his way up a loooong stretch of road) but he does it for someone walking down a short hallway, removing what could only be a second of footage in between. We've all heard him bemoan how slow he finds some of his earlier films when he comes back to do a commentary, and this seems to be the nadir of that kind of thinking - anything to make things move faster, no matter how silly it looks or how much it draws attention to the movie-ness of it all (see also: bad model shots, which he calls out on the commentary track that he recorded before the movie was even released!). Maybe it's part of the point, but if so it doesn't work for me.

Luckily there is SOME fun to be had, mostly in the last half hour. There's a great sequence (thankfully free of the dissolves and other goofiness) where Henstridge and Cube take turns with Statham and Duvall, two taking point and fending off ghosts while the others reload as they back their way down a corridor, offering the sort of Precinct 13 energy that the film often lacks. And while they don't really do much with it, the idea that killing their attackers only leaves them more likely to be possessed themselves (as the "ghost" seeks a new host) is pretty fun, and you almost get the idea that maybe this might have been better if he was reinventing The Thing instead of P13. And, perhaps this is why the film has had some renewed defense recently, I do quite like that it's a matriarchal future and no one is questioning Henstridge's authority (indeed, she replaced another woman who dies early).

In other words, it's not a total disaster, and there's enough Carpenterisms (Peter Jason pops up, the score's pretty good, the western motifs) to make it feel like a genuine entry in his filmography as opposed to the more anonymous nature of The Ward. But it's also only because his name is there that anyone - including myself - is willing to give it that much benefit of the doubt. If this was some music video or TV director who got plugged into the director spot, few would even remember its existence after even five years, let alone twenty. For what it's worth, I put in my dusty DVD (yep, I never even bothered to upgrade to Blu - his lone major film I don't own on the format) after watching the movie on Hulu and he seems pretty happy on the behind the scenes stuff, and his commentary with Henstridge is one of his more engaging ones (if the movie had been a hit, I suspect they would have worked together again, as they seem very chummy), so this doesn't seem to be a Memoirs kind of case where he was just collecting a check. Sometimes things just don't work out like you hope, whether you're sitting in the director's chair or the theater.

What say you?

P.S. I wasn't actually going to write this up, but today is the 15th birthday of Horror Movie a Day! So you get this little treat.

*I did see The Ward in theaters, but it was only playing once a day at a tiny theater here in Los Angeles, where you'd assume it'd be easier to catch any flick let alone the new one from someone like Carpenter.

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