Ghostbusters Afterlife, dang I was rooting for you but as luck would have it, there are at least two blatantly obvious and gross missteps – can you guess which they are?  These are not blips, continuity or tie in errors, they are GROSS errors in the big storyline, not the subplots or side stories.

I only caught on right after I left the viewing theater and was walking back to my car when I asked myself one question and it led to both gears falling off the wagon – so to speak.

The more shocking element in all of this is I didn’t see it while watching the film, I was caught up by the action in the movie, one scene to the next, like a roller coaster ride – and the audience cheering and laughing was infectious so my brain was a little in zombie crowd mode.

And that is how most action movies are except the other action movies are loaded with spectacle while Ghostbusters Afterlife is a modestly “quiet” one by comparison.

To elaborate, most action movies I have to rerun into my head at the office or at home when I am sitting down and beginning to sketch an outline of the review.

With Ghostbusters it happened right outside the theater, just as I was leaving the parking lot.  But first things first, let me walk you through my first reactions and impressions as I was watching this newest adventure from Reitman and the Ghostbusting Team.

Let’s rewind for a decade or four back to the original Ghostbusters in 1984 – when “New York was teeming with ghosts” and that got us all busting with laughs.  Back in those days, ghost movies were SCARY boogers, creaking doors, flickering lights, young teenage girls wandering into dilapidated summer homes only to be faced by Friday The 13^th Freddie or worse the hockey mask wearing Jason Myers.

In short ghost movies were closer in substance and style to hacking and butcher shop movies, designed to scare you with blood and gore, ghoulish ends, disappearances in screams, the shimmers of mirrors and the constant teasing of supernatural beings that are beyond flesh and blood causing death and misery to the band of their victims.

Ghost movies were not funny, were not lighthearted, were not comedy romps with a large lineup of top-notch comedic talents who threw witty comebacks and caution to the wind.   Even the “modern-day” thriller romance movie Ghost (1990 Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore) was filled with violence, tragedy, loss, hurt and bittersweet love.

And most of all ghost movies were about hapless victims not a bunch of looney tune scientists armed with Luke Skywalker-type laser beam fusion reactor tanks on their backs – until of course Ghostbusters burst on the scene and fracked the heavens.

Thunder, lightning, the earth shook, the gods themselves cried when the Ghostbusting team broke the stereotype.  The movie, the idea, became an overnight sensation, a GLOBAL BLOCKBUSTER.

Okay, well I kinda had to put today’s viewers, many of whom as stated by Phoebe (McKenna Grace) were not even born until 20 years later, in perspective because you would think that ever since 1984’s Ghostbusters with Murray, Akroyd, Ramis, Moranis and Winston, Hollywood productions would never go back to the creaky formula of ghost movies epitomized by Spielberg’s 1982 family-oriented sugar-coated Disney-esque “Fun House” ride, Poltergeist.

SPOILER ALERT!

The fun parts of Ghostbusters Afterlife is the fresh face it puts on with a new generation of really younger actors, the aforementioned McKenna Grace as the leader of the group, with her grandfather’s scientist mind and penchant to tackling problems as a scientist.  Her grandfather dies in the opening act of the movie in mysterious circumstances and we find out, BIG SPOILER, he is one of the original Ghostbusters heroes, Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis passed away in 2014 and never got to see this finished project).

From the hyperkinetic and busting busy scenes of New York to the quiet serene countryside of Kansas with Dorothy – I couldn’t help but love the premise and setup.  Our new heroes are young, inexperienced but as is currently the norm with Hollywood – from Home Alone to The Incredibles to The Simpsons’ Bart and Lisa, young kids are portrayed as smarter and wiser beyond their years, a trait that gets a bit tired and old when used across the board as a story concept or driver. It’s a tired hook, like so many 1990s and 2000s trance and EDM tracklist hooks.

Some of my earliest reactions to seeing the young actors in action as an ensemble was “oh boy is this Stranger Things Meets Ghostbusters?”

Yes and no, clearly they either could not snag Millie Bobby Brown, or it would have been an obvious tip off if they had. McKenna Grace very ably fills those shoes.

The amalgation would make sense since both TV series and movie franchise deal with the supernatural in a fish-out-of-bowl framwework.

Never mind in this movie, with Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard as Trevor and Phoebe’s older brother, the movie sinks its teeth into the teen coming-of-age flavor as a backdrop with the help of Logan Kim (Podcast) and Celeste O’Connor (Lucky) plus Paul Rudd as their not-quite-the-mature adult school teacher (yep, its Marvel’s Antman to lend some heavy lifting).  Carrie Coon as Callie Spengler does a really good turn as the bereft single mother who has daddy separation issues, and in this movie, she is closer than ever to the classic Teri Garr mom (Oh God, Close Encounters of The Third Kind and Mr. Mom).

From some of the earliest scenes and all the way to the end, drop all of the songs from the music track and Afterlife has an eerie reverberation with the Goonies movie – and the main instrumental scoring that recalls super popular Spielberg movies of the 1980s and 1990s but is mostly crackling with the audio loops of the first two Ghostbusters movies.

But hey you know you are in trouble as a movie reviewer when half of your review are previous movie references.

First and foremost Afterlife feels almost like a family drama punctuated by horror and comedy.  The family plight thread which I believe was supposed to be background plot device has far more play time than it should have.

Callie and the kids have really fun and cool scenes together – there is a little parenting mini episode tucked inside this one, like so many big budget movies that now MUST SELL THE FAMILY ANGLE to bring audiences of all ages to the movie house. 

More pros and cons in the complete review of Ghostbusters
Afterlife the Gold and Silver Members Edition.
FYI, click on each small photo to view the larger cripser version

All contents © 2021 for West Coast Midnight Run™. All rights reserved.