Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Though not everyone rejected the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot (I’ll pick it any day over Ghostbusters II) generally, the fans didn’t care for it. And so, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a lovingly nostalgic sequel. Even better, is has enough new elements to make it more than a carbon copy.
In 2021, the Ghostbusters have disbanded. Egon Spengler is now a loner living in the small town of Summerville, Oklahoma. After failing to capture a mysterious entity, he dies and leaves everything he owns - which isn’t much - to his estranged daughter, Callie (Carrie Coon). Her two children, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (McKenna Grace) stumble upon the many bizarre gadgets on the farm, unaware they may be the world’s last line of defense against a growing supernatural threat.
We’ll get to the cameos and callbacks later. For now, let’s talk about the film's protagonists, which are Phoebe, Trevor, and their new friends at Summerville: a junior podcaster and ghost enthusiast named “Podcast” (Logan Kim) and Lucky Domingo (Celeste O’Connor), Trevor’s co-worker and love interest. They're delightful. McKenna Grace, in particular, is a ton of fun donning the trademark Spengler haircut and glasses. Her attempts to make friends using bad jokes comes back all the way around to become both funny and endearing. You feel the same giddy excitement as they do while investigating mysterious sculptures inside the nearby abandoned mine and testing out the strange devices inside the Spengler farm - it’s the sort of adventure you dreamed of at their age. When their attempts to contain ghosts turn out to be more destructive than anticipated, it feels like a good-natured adventure. Who didn’t get busted for borrowing a car without permission and wreaking a little bit of havoc at least once?
The young actors are excellent in their roles and the adults do well too. Paul Rudd plays Gary Grooberson, Phoebe and Podcast’s middle-school science teacher and Callie’s love interest. He plays off of Carrie Coon well, bringing a certain dad-like charm, and helping preserve the smile that’s been perpetually fixed onto your face. This film is not as funny as the original Ghostbusters but it isn’t really trying to be. It’s got a certain identity of its own thanks to the kiddie protagonists. It’s more of a summer adventure than anything else.
Well, it has its own identity at first but as we learn what the late grandpa Spengler was fighting, our new heroes are pushed aside for a reunion thirty-plus years in the making. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is obsessed with its past. There is no reason for a scene featuring an army of tiny Stay Puft Marshmallow men EXCEPT that we had a big “scary” one back in the day. Generally, the tributes are well done but so often it’s “been there, done that”. Let's give the new heroes a chance to shine! They’ve proven they can carry a film.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife has the longest post-credit scene I think I’ve ever seen and though I consider the cameos to be the film's low-point, I suspect others will have the opposite reaction. It’s certainly worth seeing but the picture I’d get really excited about is the follow-up to this one, the story that lets go of the past and stands on its own. (Theatrical version on the big screen, December 5, 2021)
