Terror is the same on any planet. From John Carpenter, the master of horror behind 1998's hit John Carpenter's Vampires and classics like The Thing and Halloween, comes a sci-fi thriller full of explosive action and bone-chilling suspense. Natasha Henstridge (Species) is Melanie Ballard, a headstrong police lieutenant on Mars in the year 2025. Humans have been colonizing and mining on the red planet for some time, but when Ballard and her squad are sent to a remote region to apprehend the dangerous criminal James "Desolation" Williams, played by Ice Cube (Friday), they discover that he's the least of their worries. The mining operations have unleashed a deadly army of Martian spirits who take over the bodies of humans and won't stop until they destroy all invaders of their planet.

In the year 2176, Earth has colonized Mars, and all positions of power are held by women. Police Lieutenant Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) is assigned to take a crew via train from the metropolis of Chryste to the deserted mining town of Shining Station to capture an extremely dangerous convict, Desolation Williams (Ice Cube). When Ballard and her crew arrive at Shining Station, an eerily deserted town, they find not only Williams, but also scientist Dr. Whitlock (Joanna Cassidy), who has secluded herself in the colony for safety. She tells Ballard and her crew that a mining project released a mysterious cloud from beneath the planet's surface. It is possessing the colonists, causing them to hunt down and kill off any non-possessed beings. Ballard and her crew decide that they must destroy the possessed beings for the good of the planet, a job which is more difficult than anyone predicts.

John Carpenter's 17th theatrical feature combines action, horror, and sci-fi with thematic elements from earlier works (most notably ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and THE THING). Rough around the edges with lots of energy and a sense of fun, GHOSTS OF MARS is a spirited genre cocktail.