Ghostbusters: Afterlife Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

An Unspirited Sequel

Review by Alice Jones-Rodgers.

If you thought Paul Feig’s controversial, woke-friendly 2016 reboot of ‘Ghostbusters’ was utterly pointless, then you ain’t seen nothing yet! For now, after no less than four COVID-induced delays, comes ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’, a sequel to the 1984 original and the 1989 second instalment directed by Jason Reitman, son of director of those cinematic classics, Ivan Reitman. From the outset, there is no doubt that Jason’s heart was in the right place when he set out to make this film, but the result, despite its hefty dependence on cues from his father’s work is, if you will pardon the expression, oddly unspirited.

Of course, ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ was at a major disadvantage from the outset, having to follow in the footsteps of two supernatural comedy films which, combined, grossed approximately $455million at US Box Offices alone and became nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. It also had the unenviable tasks of having to both rewrite the wrongs of that 2016 film and find a new angle to approach its subject from that would not upset too many ‘Ghostbusters’ fans. As we went to print, ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ had grossed approximately $90million at US Box Offices in just under a month. So, a promising start in terms of bums on seats, but the film has certainly failed to spark the imagination in quite the same way as its predecessors.

Perhaps this is something to do with the very different tone of this latest addition to the ‘Ghostbusters’ franchise and the fact that it is something of a schizophrenic mess, on one hand attempting to be a compelling family story within a ghost adventure and on the other, wanting to be a film built upon good old-fashioned nostalgia. The main problem with ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ though is that in just over two hours, nothing actually really happens, with the whole first hour being spent getting to know its characters and remaining time being given over to, not just the ‘N’ word, but a massive over-indulgence in fan service. In comparison, within the first half hour of the 1984 ‘Ghostbusters’, we had gotten to know the three members of the original outfit (Egon Spengler, played by the late Harold Ramis; Peter Venkman, played by Bill Murray and Ray Stantz, played by Dan Akroyd) and they had busted their first ghost, Slimer.

The plot of ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ itself is solid enough and one that we

could easily imagine having formed the basis of an ‘80s adventure film. Divorced single mother, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) and her two children, Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) are evicted from their New York apartment and forced to move into a dilapidated farmhouse in Oklahoma left to Callie by her late father. Here, the children find the old ghostbusting equipment and enlist Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), middle school science teacher to Phoebe and new found friend Podcast (Logan Kim), to help work it. Grooberson, of course, also just happens to be a massive Ghotbusters fanatic and an amateur parapsychologist fascinated by the large number of earthquakes in the area despite their being no faultlines. However, the script is, at best, lacklustre, makes less and less sense as the film progresses and, try as they might, Jason Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan fail to summon up anything approaching the type of clever humour that inhabited Ramis and Akroyd’s original writing. Yes, both Akroyd and Murray reprise their roles, whilst Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts all make welcome returns as fourth Ghostbuster Winston Zeddemore (introduced in ‘Ghostbusters II’), Dana Bartlett and Janine Melnitz, respectively, and, heck, even Marshmellow Man is back (albeit in a very different form), but the real coup would have been if Akroyd had been brought in to at least co-write the script in order to add a bit of zest to what is otherwise quite a dreary affair.

Appearances from the cast members of ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Ghostbusters II’ may at first have seemed like the strongest draw to ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’, but the actual highlight of the whole film is Grace’s performance. Already something of a Hollywood veteran at the tender age of 15, having previously starred in films as wildly varied as ‘Frankenstein’ (2015); ‘I, Tonya’ (2017) and ‘Captain Marvel’ (2019), she here does a magnificent job of bringing back the curious spirit of Egon, thus bridging the gap between the older generation of Ghostbusters and the new generation. She is currently taking a break from acting due to undergoing surgery for a back problem and we wouldn’t be at all surprised if this had been caused by having to carry this whole film on her shoulders.

It is a given that, whatever tack had been taken, ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ could never have lived up to either the greatness of films it follows or the expectation that has surrounded its release, but we still expected much more than this. Give it another five years and we dare say that somebody will have another attempt at rehashing what should have really been left as a treasured memory from the ‘80s all along, but next time, “Who you gonna call?” Certainly not Jason Reitman.