Movie review: Ghostbusters – Afterlife

(courtesy IMP Awards)

As memorable catchphrases go, it’s hard to go past “Who ya gonna call?” which is followed, without usually a second’s hesitation, by “GHOSTBUSTERS!”

Such is the heady power of nostalgia for this venerable and much-loved franchise, that simply uttering that single catchphrase or sighting the vivid red and white ghostly logo is enough to bring a longing to watch the films all over again, since for many people it’s not simply the films themselves that comes draped in rose-tinted hues but the times surrounding first or subsequent views.

In that sense, and this is true, for any franchise worth its much-loved salt, nostalgia is a warm and comforting thing, a balm for the current reality-troubled soul; it can, however, when invoked in a new addition, in this case, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, become an albatross around the neck of the producers since the film isn’t being judged on its merits alone but how it measures up to nostalgia super-sized expectations.

Thankfully, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, directed and co-written (with Gil Kenan) by Jason Reitman, son of original director and producer Ivan Reitman, who sadly just passed away, manages to mostly sidestep the beastly overshadowing of nostalgia largely by cannily embracing it, cognisant of the fact that in a franchise this popular and well-known, it’s all but impossible to avoid paying homage to a slew of characters, catchphrases, visual touchstones and the like.

It largely manages to do this in a way that doesn’t feel too derivative, certainly in the first two-thirds of the film where the slow build-up, centred on wholly new characters coming into contact with key tropes of the franchise – the Ecto-1 car in which the original Ghostbusters sped to the scene of the latest supernatural incursion, proton packs and the P.K.E. Meter – gives Ghostbusters: Afterlife a chance to establish and sustain its won identity and personality.

That’s important because in the final third of the film, it’s rose-tinted glasses at full mostly well-executed magnification, and by allowing the film to be its own distinctive entry in the franchise, it’s able to largely fold in both the nostalgic elements and the new elements and offer a profoundly moving film that actually packs some genuine emotional punch.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is listed as the direct sequel to Ghostbusters (1884) and Ghostbusters II (1989) while acknowledged as the fourth film in the franchise after 2016’s reimagined entry, might be very much its own creature in one sense, but comes with the expected close ties to the first two films.

It centres on Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) the tech-savvy, science-loving granddaughter of Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) who, along her older brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and single mother Callie (Carrie Coon) moves to town of Summerville, Oklahoma, built by Ivo Sandor (J. K. Simmons) who, you may recall was the one responsible to conjuring up the Sumerian god Gozer in the original film.

Quite he chose the middle of Oklahome to continue his cult is never made clear, but within hours it seems of arriving Phoebe, and to a lesser extent, Trevor, discover that not only is Summerville way more spooky than meets the eye but that their recently-departed grandfather is actually is one of the famous Ghostbusters who made New York safe again in the 1980s.

Phoebe is especially excited by this, and egged on by her summer school teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) and new friend Podcast (Logan Kim), she sets about working out why it is that chess sets play themselves in their rundown old farmhouse Elgon bequeathed to his estranged daughter Callie, what all the items in the messy, overstacked lab mean and why it is that Summerville, nowhere tectonic plates or any sort of volcanic activity, is shaking so much.

There is much portent and doom a-building, but Ghostbusters: Afterlife seems content to let things idle happily along for the most part, aware that setting the scene, especially with so many narrative dots to connect and nostalgic elements to integrate, will benefit the storyline in the long-run and will mean, as already discussed, that the film won’t disappear under the weight of nostalgic expectation.

To be fair, for some people it likely still will, since all they have known for a good few decades, 2016’s rather enjoyable entry aside, are the antics of Spengler, Venkman (Bill Murray), Stantz (Dan Akroyd) and Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and nothing is going to measure to that.

But if you leave yourself open, not so much to possession by the beast-like manifestations of Gozer’s Gatekeeper and Keymaster but to the fact that Ghostbusters: Afterlife might be a great addition to the franchise, which is most certainly is, you will likely find yourself having a grand old time.

Granted, the film does get bogged down in the final act to an extent in the more nostalgic elements, with the final scenes dispensed with rather more quickly than you might expect, which does jar with the coming-of-age/ dealing with past pain adventuring of the first significant part of the film, but overall Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a giddy ride that deftly pays homage to the franchise’s past while opening up a possible new chapter for it going forward (something that is more than hinted in the post-credits scene; there is also, it should be noted, a brief mid-credits scene too).

Easter eggs abound and sharp-eyed franchise devotees will find themselves glorying in references to the first two films and some of their key players and characters (the Stay Puft and Muncher paranormal figures among them) , but honestly you could watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife very much on its own terms and have a perfectly fine viewing time, one which will no doubt spur you, courtesy of well-placed clips from the first two instalments, to go back and see why you shouldn’t be afraid of no ghosts.

It’s not a perfect film, but it gets far more right than it gets wrong, managing to balance nostalgia and newness relatively well, introducing us to what amounts to Ghostbusters: The Next Generation, while having a lot of outrageously over the top fun all with some straight-to-the-heart, poignantly evocative moments folded in that will have you reaching for the tissue box, all of which together prove, for ghosts and humans alike, that there is plenty of un-life left in this franchise yet.

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