It’s the year 2176 A.D. and Mars has been long been colonized due to overcrowding on Earth. People live and work on outposts all over the planet, mining Mars for all of its valuable natural resources. A small squad of police is on transport assignment in Shining Canyon transferring a very dangerous criminal, James “Desolation” Williams. Williams, the most notorious criminal on Mars, has no intention of making the trip easy on Lt. Melanie Ballard, a two-year veteran of the force. Meanwhile, a mining operation uncovers the ruins of an ancient Martian civilization that unleashes an ethereal doomsday machine. These ghostly Martian warriors, unleashed and unstoppable, systematically take over the bodies of the human intruders with the intent of ridding the planet of the Earthly invaders. Soon, what started as a battle of wits between cop and criminal brings them together in a fundamental battle for human survival?

When one watches John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars, one is acutely aware that we are watching a film helmed by a filmmaker who is, sadly, a ghost of his former self. While Mars makes some attempt at revisiting Carpenter’s fascination with the Western, this time around, unlike Vampires, he does so with an almost ridiculous degree of clumsy self-importance. As with recent cinematic treks to the Red Planet, ghosts of mars is saddled with a script devoid of any sense of character, and becomes awash in a consistent muddle. Appallingly derivative, Carpenter’s script, co-written with Larry Sulkis, is riddled with some of the most ridiculous dialogue to grace a contemporary screenplay. How on earth any studio could greenlight a script of such dismal first-draft writing remains incomprehensible. It’s no wonder that Carpenter’s sometimes talented ensemble, goes through the motions, delivering, in all, passionless, lifeless performances en masse.

Though, as with all Carpenter’s work, the film is beautifully shot and competently crafted, it lack the kind of voracious energy that is inherent in much of carpenter’s work, nor do these actors bring any much-needed humour to the vacuous script. The outcome is a dull, lifeless affair, and one can’t imagine audiences willing to embrace such stupidity during this most competitive of movie seasons. More likely, multiplexes showing Mars will resemble fitting ghost towns.