Rish Outfield's reviews
I once said that John Carpenter makes great, but unsatisfying films. In the case of Ghosts of Mars, he definitely got one of those two. In a way, it's like a Sci-Fi remake of Assault On Precinct 13, only not nearly as good.
Tyranist explains the story in his review, except to say that rapper Ice-T played the criminal everyone suspects for the murders. The cast was interesting, with some familiar faces. I like Natasha Henstridge. I suppose anybody with eyes will tell you the same thing, so that's not much of a statement. I'm not much of an Ice-T fan, and this film didn't help that any. It won't be surprising that I found his character a little hard to like, but a lot of Carpenter's characters are flawed. Snake Plissken certainly was. James Woods in Vampires. Roddy Piper battled someone for half an hour over whether he'd put on a pair of glasses or not. I suppose there would be some viewers that thought Ice-T was a good anti-hero. But there's more to a successful character besides a pissed-off look and surly attitude.
I'm not entirely sure what it is that was wrong with Ghosts of Mars. It wasn't scary, by any means, and it wasn't funny, though a moment or two certainly tried. It wasn't even all that action-packed, as I found myself struggling to stay awake, even in the climactic train sequence. The special effects were okay, nothing to write back to Earth about, though. It had some interesting ideas (such as the matriarchal society on Mars, and a creature that possesses a host until it dies, then jumps to the next one), but didn't seem to use them in a constructive way. It was a lot of macho swaggering and violence, but I didn't care about the characters (in fact, when one of them died, rather violently and off-screen, my reaction was "Oh. Did that happen?" and nothing more). The chief villain of the piece (tyranist explained that his name was Big Daddy Mars, as if I needed another reason not to like the film) was ridiculous-looking, completely not frightening, and more obnoxious than anything else. He kind of reminded me of the lead singer from Dead or Alive (if he were to work out, pierce himself several times, and come back from the grave), but Big Daddy Mars didn't even come close to spinning me right round like a record.
The movie simply wasn't very good. No surprise considering how Carpenter has fared lately. But it should have been better.

The tyranist's thoughts
Typical and almost formulaic Carpenter. It's too bad that he hasn't come up with anything truly original for a few years. Still, Natasha Henstridge isn't hard to look at.
So Mars has been partially colonised and is mostly occupied by miners. There's been an outbreak of unusual behavior and severe death at a few colonies. Most people are blaming it on one man, but a team sent in to bring him back.
I've been a fan of Carpenter's for a long time, but even I have to admit that this was pretty sub-par. I'm sure it was pitched as Escape from New York on Mars. While I liked some of the characters and I dug on the sci-fi feel of the movie, it was clear from the purpose that kicking ass and not much else was the point of the movie. The plot just doesn't hold up much in spite of what I thought was a good backstory. Perhaps a little more context would have helped some.
Carpenter fans might want to see this as it is pretty typical of him. On the other hand, they might be terribly disappointed.