Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Director: Jason Reitman
Writer: Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan, Dan Aykroyd (original screenwriter), Harold Ramis (original screenwriter)
Starring: Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, McKenna Grace, Logan Kim, Celeste O’Connor
Reason for watching: anytime a sequel to a hit movie from 30-plus years ago comes out, you gotta watch it because it affects the legacy of the original movie
Number of times I’ve watched it: first-time viewing
***
Why do we keep coming back here, folks? Why? I am so annoyed by the fact this movie even exists. I went into it hoping it could be good, but there was nothing positive that I had heard about this movie coming into it. On paper this is not the worst movie possible. Carrie Coon is talented. Finn Wolfhard and McKenna Grace have promise. Paul Rudd is funny and is the sexiest man alive this year! What could possibly go wrong? Well honestly, not that much, but it bored me into falling asleep. Ghostbusters was funny, ridiculous, and zany. But this movie just feels so glued and stitched together with cliches that I can predict everything that is about to happen. That is not what you want from a Ghostbusters sequel.
Basically Ghostbusters: Afterlife follows Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) and her kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace), as they move to Summerville, Oklahoma with nothing to their names except a run-down home owned by Callie’s late father, Dr. Egon Spengler. As activities in the town begin to take a supernatural turn, the family makes friends with Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), a loner seismologist. They have to ban together to take down the evil spirit that has been looming in wait to strike, but they have some help from some cameos…I mean old friends of the family.
I can barely pretend to be interested in this movie, guys. Honestly, we are starting to hit the bottom of the barrel in terms of interesting IP that has not been remade or rebooted. I get it. People spend money on things they are familiar with because the comfort of nostalgia is nice especially during a pandemic that is not going away quietly. Clearly, my opinion is not the popular one here as this movie made somewhere around $40 million this last weekend. But I want more out of my blockbusters.
My first real problem here is the pace of the movie. The Spengler family’s transition into the town of Summerville takes the first hour of the movie. While that happens we only have two ghost encounters and the bare minimum of jokes. The teenage son Trevor gets teased for being a loser and made fun of for wanting to have cell phone service. Phoebe is a bright kid and clearly, her character is meant to be a reflection of Egon from the original movie, but her dryness does not play when she does not have an eccentric cast to work with her. You need a yin to a yang for comedy. The straight man needs the funny guy, and no one here is the funny guy really. Paul Rudd is wasted too on being a nerd who barely talks to anyone. None of the technical aspects of this movie wow me. The effects are fine but not special enough to save the poor action scenes. The desert setting is certainly a stark contrast to New York City, but the contrast does not serve the story of the movie in any real way.
Part of me wonders if this movie came to be just because of the controversy around the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. Remember that one? Back when we could not have four women be Ghostbusters because the fanboys all squealed like cowards and cried because the world changed underneath them. So to take the bad aftertaste of that movie out of everyone’s mouth the studio flopped back and made a worthless sequel that exists for no reason except to weigh down the original’s quality. I know that is not what the studio meant to do but that is all that happens here. Honestly, big-time movie studios are getting bullied by tiny portion of their franchise’s fan base into making a lesser movie just to appease a select few. It is pathetic to me.
This movie was bad. I am sad that it is. But I was not surprised that I did not like it. At least we can take solace in knowing that season four of Stranger Things is coming and Finn Wolfhard can remind us why we actually like his acting again.
3/10
Until I see another one