10 Sci-Fi Movie Ideas Too Good To Fail (That Did It Anyway)
6. Ghosts Of Mars - Ghosts! On Mars! (No Fun Or Tension, Though)
It took decades for the Halloween helmer’s sci-fi horror masterpiece The Thing to finally be recognized as the genius genre fusion it was, and by the time studios were willing to let him film another space-set spooky thriller, the result was… well, it was worthy of the undeserved critical scorn heaped on The Thing and more.
The premise, however, remains undeniably great. It’s right there in the title—Ghosts on Mars! Far in the future, when the titular red planet has long since become home to human outposts, a set of Martian spirits are accidentally let loose and wreak havoc amongst a crew of cops and their prisoner. The flick should have been a perfect fusion of supernatural scares and an automatically eerie, remote space-based setting, joining the likes of beloved video game franchises Doom and Dead Space as a classic “demons outside of earth” story.
However, despite Carpenter’s wish to make a campy, over-the-top action movie out of the flick’s script, the finished product suffered with a crippling sense of self-seriousness which hampered any attempts at fun and alienated audiences when it was released in 2001.