Horror fans won't like this movie because it's not funny, comedy fans won't like this movie because it isn't funny, and Eddie Murphy fans (all twenty of them!) won't like this movie because Eddie Murphy has better chances at winning the Mr. Olympia rather than convince us he is a Romanian vampire.

Almost without exception, multiple screenwriters are a warning sign of good intentions gone awry in a feature film, and this Eddie Murphy vehicle with a quartet of credited scribes and its star receiving co-story honors, is a perfect example of how not to create a movie. While the horror-comedy hybrids of John Landis are clearly the template for this genre effort, the film is a bungled affair that doesn't begin to measure up to that director's An American Werewolf in London (1981) or even one of his lesser efforts such as Innocent Blood (1992). Between them, the gaggle of wordsmiths and director Wes Craven can't seem to distinguish the comedy from the horror, creating a badly schismatic tone. It's a fatal flaw the story never manages to overcome, symbolized in the character played by Murphy as alternately amusing and unrepentantly evil (so...which is he, anyway?). This is a transitional film for the star, who can be observed striving after the "African-American Cary Grant" status that he so desperately craved (and which nearly derailed his career) while simultaneously embracing the Peter Sellers-inspired multiple character work that would propel him back to the top of the comedy hero heap with such films as The Nutty Professor (1996), Dr. Doolittle (1998), and Bowfinger (1999). Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) isn't a bad concept for a film, but nobody involved seems to have a strong, clear vision of what exactly such a situation should yield. Laughs? Chills? If the filmmakers don't know the answer right from the beginning, the audience will certainly never figure it out.

ghosts of mars was NOT shit. i liked it.