for good. Release Critical reception Ghosts of Mars received mostly negative reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 22% based on 108 reviews, with the consensus stating "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is not one of Carpenter's better movies, filled as it is with bad dialogue, bad acting, confusing flashbacks, and scenes that are more campy than scary." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale. Rita Kempley of The Washington Post called the film "a schlocky, sluggish shoot-em-up", giving the film one star out of five, and later listing the film as the 3rd worst film of the year. Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle gave the film one star out of five, saying "Ghosts of Mars is a muddled, derivative, and embarrassing disaster straight on through." Bruce Fretts of Entertainment Weekly said about the film "...it's distressingly amateurish and hackneyed to the point of absurdity," further adding "it's dishearting to see the 'master of horror' bring himself to both write and direct a film with such a prepubescent understanding of horror". James Berardinelli gave the film 1.5 stars out of four. Rob Gonsalves of eFilmCritic.com suggested that the film was symbolic of "Carpenter at rock bottom". According to press reviews, factors contributing to the box office failure of the film included "poor set designs, hammy acting and a poorly developed script". Conversely, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film three stars out of four, writing, "Ghosts of Mars delivers on its chosen level and I enjoyed it, but I wonder why so many science-fiction films turn into extended exercises in Blast the Aliens...this is an instance where it works." Richard Roeper also awarded the film three stars out of four, saying "is it stupid? Certainly. I think that's the point. Carpenter is a smart man and he knows exactly what he's doing. I miss seeing campy action flicks like this at the drive-in." David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, film critics for The Movie Show, both awarded the film three stars out of five. In his review, Stratton made the following observation – "John Carpenter doesn't seem to have moved forward from the 70s and early 80s, when he made his best films. Though it's not terribly exciting, Ghosts Of Mars does have a marvelously skewed vision and can deliver genuine morbid laughs when it