The first half is a warm wallow in small-town Americana with some of the snappiest dialogue you’ve ever heard on film. The best lines are given to Mckenna Grace and her pal Logan Kim – kids who are not the usual Hollywood brats but intelligent and funny. The adults have some witty lines too. It’s fun until, this being part of the Ghostbusters franchise, it develops into a silly cgi-fest. There’s also a mawkish ending that pays homage to the original film and completely skews the essence of the first half.
Ghostbusters 4 - Afterlife may put the tormented souls of 2 and 3 to rest but this is because it plays a very safe game - It's 100 % fan service. So well-versed are Hollywood-execs at producing films that answer to internet speculation and spoiler-addicted fans, this Ghostbusters entry offers the viewer nothing new. Imagine Super-8 (or Stranger Things) thrown into a blender with Ghostbusters 1 and you're there (and you've probably used about the same amount of imagination as the execs who created this). In playing it safe, the film is actually entertaining and occasionally funny. It's light entertainment and has some fab SFX - it's streets better than Ghostbuster 2 and 3, so at least this does well to re-align the series and make it watchable. The first film casts a very long shadow over this one, and as a consequence, it will end up being fairly unmemorable which is a shame because the error teaser trailer promised us something a bit deeper, a bit more interesting, and like the original something unique. To these ends it barely scrapes a pass mark.
5.5 out of 10
Absolutely loved this film! It was so true to the original and so well cast, I really had a blast watching it. Highly recommended for any Ghostbusters fan!
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is likely to gain the easy comparison of being The Force Awakens of this saga. It draws a lot from the original film and characters but also tries to pass the torch as a soft reboot of sorts. That is indeed what is going down within Afterlife but it is nowhere near as compelling or even clever as The Force Awakens attempted to reignite the familiar sensations. The Force Awakens features another Death Star but it’s at least bigger and leads to Harrison Ford getting in the funny line “How do you blow it up? There’s always a way to blow it up.” Afterlife features the villain of Gozer returning and saying the exact same lines he did in the first film.
How could this film have fumbled so hard? It had an opportune moment to bring something new to the table. It’s the first Ghostbusters movie to go outside a city and take the comical ghostbusting antics into a small town. Sure, it feels like the film is more trying to be an Amblin-style picture than the shlubby comedy Ghostbusters was known for, but it’s a solid route if you’re planning to center the story around kids. Teenagers Phoebe and Trevor are the new kids in town who kinda/sorta struggle to get along. They’re underdogs but seem to find the right friends early on with their courage to carry on. Finn Wolfhard as Trevor and Mckenna Grace as Phoebe are fantastic actors and once more bring ease to their performances.
The problem is they just don’t have enough scenes to get to love them. Their arcs feel so minor when they’re pushed into the roles of Ghostbusters rather quickly. Some strange occurrences around the house lead to Phoebe just kinda going with the flow of a possible ghost playing chess with her. She will later venture into the basement and discover that her grandfather was a Ghostbuster, leaving behind loads of secret tech for combatting the supernatural. Trevor will also discover the Ecto-1 in the garage and merely regard it as a piece of junk that he has to fix. It won’t be too long before they’re busting ghosts.
The ghostbusting itself is not too shabby. The best scene in the film features Trevor driving the Ecto-1 around town while Phoebe sits in a gunner seat, firing a proton pack at a fleeing ghost. Scenes like that are great in their staging and make one wish that there had been just as much faith in that scene as there were for the rest of the script to take off on its own. Unfortunately, that is not the case for Afterlife, as the ultimate showdown is exactly the same as it was in the first Ghostbusters film. Same villain, same events, same scenes, and even some of the same characters.
The nostalgic Easter eggs are pushed to absurd lengths in this picture and rarely with anything all that interesting to say. Paul Rudd plays Gary, the most eccentric of the central cast and an avid Ghostbusters fan. So why does he feel so subdued when he finally gets a chance to open a ghost trap or touch a proton pack? He’s at a loss for words and I can only assume his inability to make a good joke is meant to be interpreted as awe. And I can only assume that was the intent for the rest of the references, where the joke of a Twinkie in the glove compartment or a classic commercial is meant to be amusing because you recognize them. This also leads to one of the tackiest usages of CGI to recreate actors, despite the heartfelt nature.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife does little to differentiate itself from the myriad of other franchise retreads that have nothing interesting to bring to the table. It’s a glorified Easter egg hunt, admitted as much by the director. On that level, sure, I guess you could view the film as a game, treated as some homework cred for the trivia-obsessed geeks who dream of a Ready Player One utopia. But if you’re seeking more than mere Ghostbusters references, this film has so little to offer and is easily one of the worst entries in the Ghostbusters franchise.