Good news, all you poisonous male Ghostbusters fans who accused the 2016 reboot of ruining your childhood. You have your wish in the form of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is simply brimming with fanservice, in-jokes, and callbacks, to the point where there’s hardly any movie left. Congratulations! You’re getting exactly what you asked for, and it sucks. It sucks ectoplasm. Are you happy now?
It doesn’t start out so bad, to be fair. Egon Spengler’s estranged daughter Callie (Carrie Coon) receives the news of his death around the same time that her family is evicted from their apartment in the big city. Since he left her his run-down farmhouse in rural Oklahoma, she moves there with her 15-year-old son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and 12-year-old daughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and tries to make a new start. It’s science nerd Phoebe who finds the ghost trap hidden under the floorboards and the secret bunker in the basement where Egon had been detailing the area’s paranormal activity. Her science teacher (Paul Rudd) has to fill her and her brother in on who their grandfather used to be in the 1980s.
Director/co-writer Jason Reitman is the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the original movies. Reitman fils is too good not to come up with some funny lines as the family tries to put down roots in a place where there’s no cell service. Grace — hey, she’s a Grapevine native — already has a formidable track record (Gifted, I, Tonya, Captain Marvel), and she disappears into the role of a bespectacled geek who doesn’t panic when she first sees a ghost, saying “Overstimulation keeps me calm.” She has a funny character, as does Rudd, who can’t match the sheer power of Bill Murray’s sarcasm but contributes mightily as a teacher who has given up and spends classes showing violent slasher flicks to his middle-school students.
That setup, though. It’s exactly the same as the original movie’s. The kids have to repeat the original Ghostbusters’ feat of keeping the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper from bringing Gozer the Gozerian (Emma Portner) back to life and destroying the Earth. They had 36 years to think of a new storyline, and they just play back the old one? I’m insulted. The surviving Ghostbusters come to the Sooner State to lend a hand, which doesn’t give the film any originality. This is the work of a filmmaker who’s so afraid of the fans that he can’t move. That’s why the last third of the film is an untrammeled disaster.
The younger Reitman is the wrong filmmaker, anyway. He’s best when he finds humor in ordinary modern life in Up in the Air and Tully. This project needed someone who could mix humor with supernatural horror, and Reitman has never been that guy. It’s a tall order asking anyone to match the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, the greatest comic movie monster in history, but all he can think to do is set thousands of little versions of the marshmallow man loose. The script clanks heavily trying to integrate Callie’s abandonment issues with the main plot, and the filmmakers don’t have the stomach for gross-out humor that made the original Ghostbusters so distinctive. If you want to talk about that movie’s legacy, this cynical cash grab is a bigger stain on it than that female remake from 2016. At least that indifferent comedy was trying something new. This craven nostalgia piece is only fit for the storage unit.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Starring Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard. Directed by Jason Reitman. Written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman. Rated PG-13.
I saw the reboot. I thought it was fine. The original movies still exist, so not sure how it ruins anyone’s childhood. That said, looking forward to watching this.
Fanwhiners always decry the existence of anything “destroying” what came before it. It’s egotism run amuck.
It was fine, you just sound EXTREMELY salty.
The fact that 90% of all movies that critics hate the public at large loves. This goes to show how out of touch they really are. It is a sad state of affairs’ when the is a large group of people and growing that go see movies because the critics hate it. This is due to them learning that all critics are is nothing more than a internet troll that does not hide behind a screen name.
I agree. This movie was little more than nostalgia-bait: remember Gozer? remember Ecto-1? remember the demon dogs? remember Egon? remember the fire pole? remember the Stay Puft marshmellow man?
Nothing original whatsoever. This isn’t a movie, it’s a collection of references.
Except this Movie was GREAT and fans are ROARING with applause at every screening tonight. The 2016 Ghostbusters still sucks and will always suck.
The two main leads are female, and this movie was just fine. Isn’t that what *you* wanted?
I guess it “sucks” because it didn’t devolve into wonton and queef jokes with no purpose, or make every man a stupid asshole, while actually respecting what came before it?
“Congratulations! You’re getting exactly what you asked for, and it sucks. It sucks ectoplasm. Are you happy now?”
Extremely happy, and it was great.
Its misogyny when we display a woman in a negative light, or claim she’s incompetent, but its brilliant when they do the same thing with a man? Still vomiting over the 2016 dumpsterfire reboot.
Go see afterlife, its refreshing reboot that doesn’t make you want to slit your throat half way in.
The lead in this is female… why are you being weird?
I just saw it and I really enjoyed it. I think it is the second best of the movies, the first is the original and the 3rd being the sequel. The reboot attempt in 2016 I didn’t enjoy, mostly because it felt like a parody of ghostbusters rather than a actual attempt at a true sequel and I felt it had too many poop and puke jokes. but that is just my opinion.
I miss those simpler days, when movie critics were professionals and didn’t start their reviews by attacking the fan base of a franchise.
To all you “fans” defending this turd: what was your favorite part of it — the Wal-Mart commercial in the middle of the movie, the constant hate towards Egon, or the “too lame to be Goonies” vibe of the story? O.G. fan here who was none too impressed with the 2016 reboot — not for political reasons; simply because it wasn’t that good.
Still miles ahead of Afterlife, though!
Wow. Someone decided to make a Ghostbusters film that Ghostbusters fans would actually like. What a strange concept. Instead of pandering and pushing a political agenda they make a film for entertainment purposes only. Hmm they might have hit on something here.