In 2016 a reboot of GHOSTBUSTERS was attempted, replacing the entire cast with women. With the lineup they had it should have been funny. It was anything but. Not only was it bad it was one of the worst sequels/reboots ever made. Now we have GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE. After seeing this I believe that all copies of the 2016 film should be burned. In every possible format, burned. Forgotten. This is the movie that fans deserved.
Kicking off in Summerville, Oklahoma we see a solitary figure fighting some evil force. It is captured in a Ghostbusters trap and hidden after which the figure is killed. Moving to a different location we see a woman with two children trying to cope with life. She inherits the old home the solitary figure was in just as they are evicted from their apartment. Off to Oklahoma they go.
A slight spoiler. Callie (Carrie Coon) is the daughter of Egon Spengler. Her children are Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), a 15 year old boy unhappy with the move and Phoebe (McKenna Grace), a hyper intelligent young girl with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. They arrive in town and find the home they were left, a dilapidated old house in the country surrounded by fields and in terrible shape.
Going into town that night for something to eat they stop at an old diner with roller skating carhops. One of them, Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) catches Trevor’s eye and he applies for a job there while flirting with her. Shot down he still sees a chance.
Back home Phoebe comes across a piece of equipment of Egon’s, a P.K.E. Meter. She doesn’t know what it does yet but it starts itself and leaves her to wonder. That night she puts the pieces of a chess board in place before going to bed. When she wakes, one piece is moved.
At school Phoebe meets and makes a friend, a young geeky boy named Podcast (Logan Kim), so named because he records everything for his podcast that has one subscriber. She also finds herself in a summer school class taught by Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd), a teacher who spends his time putting in old horror films for the kids to watch while he investigates some strange things happening in the area. Phoebe recognizes him as a seismologist and begins helping him.
While helping him Phoebe pulls out the ghost trap she found and Grooberson realizes what it is. She’d never heard about her grandfather’s famous exploits and he shows them on YouTube. Curiosity gets the better of them and they open the trap releasing whatever was contained inside. That ghost heads for an old mining camp located in the mountain nearby.
Back home Trevor finds a dilapidated old car in the shed and begins working to repair it and get it running. What he doesn’t realize is that this is the Ecto-1, the car the original Ghostbusters drove. Once he gets it running he takes it out only to find it may be more than he can handle at first. He eventually picks up Phoebe and Podcast but not before the two of them have found a ghost on the loose.
Trust me when I say all of this is doing nothing more than setting the players in place for what is to come. Yes, Gozer is on the way back along with her two giant monster dogs. But so much more will take place getting that into position. The nostalgic feeling of this film is overpowering and rather than being made in 2021 it feels like it was made in the eighties. Sure we have kids involved now, the newest trope for a movie from Hollywood. But it works here, better than most.
There is no single performance in this film that is not perfect. The casting is amazing. The look of the film, setting the cast in a country location rather than the streets of NYC works. The effects work here is amazing matching things from the original film perfectly. This includes an appearance by the Sta Puff Marshmallow man as you’ve never seen him. One more MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: I knew this going in. There is a reunion and it will melt your heart.
Fans of the original films will fall in love with this one.
There are two post credit sequences so don’t turn it off, let it run. And if
you don’t find yourself with a tear in your eye when this one is over I would
be surprised. This is the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in a long time.
Trust me, you and your family will as well.
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