SOURCE: Newman, Kim. Review of Ghosts of Mars, by John Carpenter. Sight and Sound 11, no. 12 (December 2001): 51–52.

In the following review, Newman comments that Ghosts of Mars represents a decline in the quality of Carpenter's films.

A year too late to count as part of the 2000 blip of Mars movies (Mission to Mars, Red Planet), Ghosts of Mars is honestly titled in that it plunders previous visions of the red planet—the disembodied Martians resisting the human invader from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, the ancient savages possessing human hordes from Quatermass and the Pit (a frequent John Carpenter crib-sheet), and the blocky railways from Ian McDonald's novel Desolation Road. Given this interesting mélange of sources, it's a shame that the film should be yet another clunky reminder of past greatness from a filmmaker whose decline continues apace.

As with the last few Carpenter films, there's a sad...