When: Friday, Nov. 19
Where: In theaters
Ah, nostalgia. Because I’m old(er than many of you), I grew up a fan of the Ghostbusters franchise. I was a baby when the first film hit, but the Bobby Brown song from the sequel is ingrained in my brain. Anyways, those memories are what drove me to head outside of my COVID cave to New York City for New York Comic-Con 2021, where unbeknownst to a number of Ghostbusters super-fans, Ghostbusters architect Ivan Reitman’s son Jason, along with Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and the rest of the Ghostbusters cast, would be giving them an advanced screening of the film, high in the sky in NYC, where the original film took place decades earlier.
A quick aside, if you will: In this day(-and-date) age, the remake feels like it’s king. Did you like some of Showtime’s Dexter? There’s likely a mid-ish revival about it. Few series really nail the revival/reboot/remake—one of my quarantine watches was to be Twin Peaks, primarily so I could take in what Lynch returned and crafted so many years later—and many of the reboot films are DOA because, simply, there isn’t enough care being put into making these new takes on old tales to feel worth it. In my humble opinion, Ghostbusters: Afterlife avoids that. The film ends up doing something else entirely, but you’ve probably read the polarizing vibe the film received after folks were able to screen it. So let’s get into it.
What Ghostbusters: Afterlife gets right is making you give a shit about being in that world in the first place. Sure, you have to take some important leaps early—this is way more of a “ghost story” than you might remember Ghostbusters being, which was important to Jason Reitman during a junket interview with Complex. “I’ll tell you a crazy story,” he began. “I was at the Director’s Guild once sitting next to Steven Spielberg, because I’m really lucky. And he asked me, ‘What are you doing next?’ I said, ‘Oh, I’m making Ghostbusters.’ And I swear to God, he turned to me and said, ‘Library Ghost. Top 10 scares of all-time.’” That library ghost is one of the most frightening things from any Ghostbusters film, and was the kind of horror that I grew up on (and may have immunized me to the breadth of the genre today). That’s the vibe Ghostbusters: Afterlife starts off with, and it maintains that sense of fear throughout its runtime, while heavily spooning large doses of nostalgia into the waiting mouths of Ghostbusters fans all over. Again, sitting in the media section behind fans who strapped Proton packs to their backs to walk around a convention, they hit. Every. Callback. It was cool, even when their applause drowned out a one-liner from Grace or Wolfhard, which is what we really need to be talking about.
In so many of these revival/reboot films, the idea is to thrust you immediately into this world. [Ed note: Think Snake Eyes.] It can feel very slapdash, forcing a story to alleviate the necessary world-building that Marvel Studios spent 10 years doing to get to where they are now. Part of Afterlife involves this, although it’s mostly the viewer’s nostalgia through Grace, the curious young brain with a knack for joke-telling and...possibly figuring out that their town is haunted. Oh, and that they have some connection to the Ghostbusters, who are something you can search for on YouTube and admire their very-’80s commercials the same way I ogle over five-hour blocks of the Saturday morning cartoons I grew up watching. Pairing this duo with Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd as the (sorry) Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray-type love interest/relationship angle was dope, and resulted in some intriguing moments of suspense and, frankly, damn-fine work. Coon shined as a mother who is hellbent on escaping a past that is barreling right toward her. She brings the emotional depth needed in the story, and the cast feeds off of that.
Plus the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man is now a bunch of smaller marshmallow men. Their scenes had a weird quality; it was hella gruesome to see them just ramble on in our world without a care, but they were also the Baby Yoda-type character. If nostalgia isn’t your bag, Ghostbusters: Afterlife can be a lot, but it’s a project that was made by the son of the guy who directed the original. It’s deeper than rap, and something you’re going to have to accept if you’re trying to take the dive.
Now I won’t spoil where this story goes, but things happen in this film that I particularly wasn’t sure on. In story, they make sense, but I’m personally not sure how I felt about it. It’s a movie, but it’s a franchise—it’s a legacy. If everyone is cool with it, let it rock, I guess. I will shut up on that now, but truth be told, I’m ultimately not mad at Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It was funny when it needed to be, and even when it dragged, you knew that around the corner all hell could break loose. If you need a good scare—or want to see a better example of Hollywood reboot culture going good—hit the theaters. —khal