Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Reader beware! You’re in for a deep dive into a blockbuster no one else cares about but me. Why do I care so deeply? Because it could have been the best film of the year, but instead it will be tossed aside in the dirt of the past.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife revives the classic magic of the 1984 original through legacy and passion. Directed by the son of the original director, Jason Reitman brings back the look and sound of 80s cinema in all its nostalgic brilliance. The “passing down the torch” theme is what this film revolves around, despite a disruption of cameos.

The new characters match the angle of the small-town setting perfectly. Finn Wolfhard plays a moody, teenage brat — and I love it. He’s so whiny it’s hilarious. Carrie Coon plays his single mom, too broke to live in the city, so she and her two kids are trapped in her dad’s decrepit barn in the middle of nowhere. The opening scene sets it off right away, giving a Speilberg-chase-scene through corn fields in an old pick-up truck with a desert mountain ripped straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind imposed against the night sky. We’re certainly not in New York anymore, as the university is replaced with a roller-skate diner and the sewers with mine shafts. It surprisingly works, too, especially with Finn Wolfhard’s teenage antics. His story connects the most with the town, as he splits off from the family house to flirt with the first girl he sees. His sister, though, is the emotional heart of the story as she discovers her grandfather’s past and what role she has to play in saving the world.

I cannot stress enough how beautiful and entertaining this film is. It should not be as good as it is, being the second reboot of a New York film that doesn’t even take place in the city. The original was lightning in a bottle, but this honorary sequel strikes gold in its passionate search for childhood wonder. A family film, made by a family, with romance, action, and enough scares to send children cowering behind their popcorn. The story is engaging, the characters are charming with their comedic quirks, and the VFX! Practical effects (the lamp especially), fog machines, recovered footage, 80s-inspired lens-flares, and modern renovations on the ghost-busting equipment! The film drips with ectoplasm and fun. I hope it has a following in the future. I hope it can be paired with the original. I hope Jason Reitman has the chance to be as successful as his father, Ivan, and the fact that they worked together on this film makes it that much better.

It’s unfortunately frustrating that I couldn’t connect to the film, no matter how hard I tried.

The story is unbalanced, leaning too slow in the beginning and almost dropping everything from the steep drop into the third act. There is no middle part to the film. It feels like it's just getting started after setting up all the characters, but then suddenly they’re in the final showdown. No build up, no midpoint-failure (there is a ‘failure’ scene but it acts more as the beginning to the conflict). This missing middle happens because there are too many characters with too much baggage to deal with before the story actually starts. And the story itself is outside the characters' problems, which, to be fair, is similar to Ghostbusters (1984), but it was more of a big set-piece rather than the central conflict. It’s not that the character list is too long, it’s that there’s not enough for each one because the film has to spend so much time with the daughter, Phoebe. And wow did I not like her.

Phoebe should not be the focus of this film. Her mom should be. Why would we have references to both Cujo and Child's Play, with the heavy theme of legacy — directed by the son of the director from Ghostbusters (1984) — and have the film not be about the mom? Parenting, specifically motherhood, is the missing piece of this film. Focusing on the mom makes the story more streamlined, allows potential for more Paul Rudd screen time, and a more human connection to the main character. They did approach this at a different angle in that the mom wasn’t like her dad at all, and so having Phoebe be the torch bearer is the right way to go, but they could do that with Finn Wolfhard’s character instead, having it flow with a rebellious teen maturing into adulthood subplot. Honestly, if they combined Phoebe’s arc of family-discovery with the mom’s arc of motherhood, then suddenly this 2-hour-film has plenty of time for Finn Wolfard to be moody and Paul Rudd to be charming — two things this film needs as much as possible. Her having two kids splits the screen time for anyone in half, limiting everything and helping no one.

There’s a smell of studio-interference beneath the skin of this film. It’s small at first, with the half-assed representation with Phoebe maybe being on the spectrum — without committing to it — and the reference of Gozer not being a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ yet they call them a ‘her’ for the rest of the film. Having two kids, one young enough to check off a demographic and other one acted by a kid from Stranger Things. But then it feels like the film doesn't care about the kids at all. There’s the two after-credits scenes that both try to respect some of the actors from the original, though in a way that feels like they’ll have a show on HBO Max next month, and the ending as a whole is emotional but for a different film entirely. The more I think about it, the more this small, personal story about family was uprooted in the last act to be the blockbuster that would rake in millions. It’s not that the references and cameos are bad, it’s just that they take over in the end, preventing the new characters we are supposed to care about from having their own room for the curtain bow. It soils the very authenticity that makes this film have a pulse.

And worst of all… they stole the final showdown from Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. I expected Cedric Diggory to ask Phoebe to bring his body back to Hogwarts. It’s such an atmospheric punch in the face from the Spielberg-80s rural feel that I just started laughing.

Overall, I want this film to succeed, even though it is flawed and I couldn’t connect. Jason Reitman is the biggest surprise with his stunning recreation of the American farmland background of ‘80s Hollywood. Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, and even Mckenna Grace hold the cracks as long as they can, but Grace’s character, Phoebe, causes too many of these problems. She is obnoxiously cold and impulsive, playing for laughs to pause only for crickets. The first hour is a gentle, warm small-town-story, but the second hour kicks it into a save-the-world blockbuster. It’s a catastrophic jump that the film doesn’t land. The homages to Ghostbusters (1984) are gut-punching and heartfelt, especially to Harold Ramis. I think they truly meant every moment with him as a family-member to the original crew. Both as a ghostbuster and a writer. I think this part of the film will be overlooked, even though it is the very reason it’s so special. Because having ghosts be more than just slimers and dogs shows that there is a real piece of humanity found in the details; something that might inspire the next generation in this growing legacy.

Story Rating: 6/10

Character Rating: 5/10

Entertainment Rating: 7/10