SOURCE: Koehler, Robert. “Carpenter Nails Down Retro, Active Planet.” Variety 384, no. 2 (27 August–2 September 2001): 31, 34.

In the following negative review, Koehler describes Carpenter's cinematic style in Ghosts of Mars as reminiscent of the low-budget “drive–in” movies of the 1970s.

The natural element for John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is the drive-in, and that's the problem. Carpenter's movies, and especially his new one, belong to a bygone filmgoing culture that reveled in cheap—rather than corporate-busting expensive—chills and thrills, where your attention was divided between checking out the screen and checking out your date. Aside from a fluke case like The Fast and the Furious, there's little room for such stuff in the multiplex era, and this deliberately pre-'90s slice of rock ‘n’ roll-tinged sci-fi horror, decorated with anything but the latest in special effects, seems particularly grungy and marginal. That's where many of Carpenter's hard-core fans want...