Like the specters and ghouls that dictate its title, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the vapid legacy sequel to the 1984 slacker comedy classic and its 1989 lackluster successor, is but a wispy embodiment of its originator, a muddled, hazy manifestation of its baseline elements bereft of any instrumental flesh or a spine. When it is not coasting on mawkish nostalgia to staggering effect, the film underscores the past’s former triumphs now tragically waning into deficits: Not only is it a blatant exercise in preestablished IP mining, but the robust sensibilities of director Jason Reitman, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind indie darlings like 2007’s Juno and 2009’s Up in the Air and, more notably, the son of the originals’ helmer Ivan Reitman, are also co-opted and squandered to ghastly degree.
In that 2007 witty whirlwind of syntax and aesthetic, it “started with a chair,” an understated evocation that indicated Reitman’s penchant for shaping eccentricities into cinematic poignance. Approximately 14 years later, Ghostbusters: Afterlife initiates with something astronomically less inspired: to resuscitate the corpse of his pop’s franchise into a manufactured product for a studio desperate and zealous to financially capitalize on their catalog of beloved content. In conforming to the safest and, thus, most audience-accessible formula, the film distorts Reitman’s signature blend of levity and pathos into hollow emulation of 80s trappings, failing to enrich or pay homage to its predecessor in any conceivable way.
“What is this pastiche even for?” is a pressing question that bounced around my brain with the frenetic verve of Slimer for the entirety of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Converse to the wry, shaggy energy of the ’84 picture, this movie curiously opts for an exceedingly generalized viewpoint of its era: the piercing whimsy and eeriness predominantly attributed to Amblin, only rendered here without any compelling insights that make it all-the-more confounding.
It’s at its most effective in an exhilarating and beguiling prologue chase sequence, but that rich ambience rapidly dissipates with no implicit ideas to supplement its strained presence. The cheeky irreverence of the former is simply in stark contrast to the grand reverence of the latter, a residual ailment of past properties being so skewed by their fanbases’ stifling affinity for them, and instead of examining how mythology reverberates throughout generations, which seems like the intention with such a radical pivot in atmosphere, Reitman and team gravitate toward heavy-handed references and bombast that only muster as superficial. A giddy, boisterous score or newfound intimacy cannot generate resonance when their underpinnings are immensely vacant; the movie’s predicate isn’t grit or artistry, only a brash incentive to contrive glib nostalgia into existence that’s commercially viable.
The original is a riotous supernatural tale of some listless, sardonic scientists who inadvertently save New York City, and this movie doesn’t have the same depth in character and tone to justify its roaming plot or similar arc trajectory of nobodies unwittingly becoming paranormal heroes. Pinching some of her last pennies and grappling with the abrupt death of her estranged father Egon Spengler, who was one of the inaugural Ghostbusters, single mother Callie (Carrie Coon) relocates with her two children Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) from their recent eviction to the only asset left to them in his untimely (and mysterious) passing: a desolate farmhouse in the insular town of Summerville, Oklahoma. As Callie reckons with this complicated relationship and especially Egon’s abandonment, the precocious, timid and scientifically inclined Phoebe and the rambunctious Trevor, assisted by local seismologist Gary (Paul Rudd), gradually unearth and become embroiled in their previously concealed legacy, including the lingering spirits in the underground caverns of Summerville that must be eradicated.
How can a film that’s competently assembled feel entirely precarious? Why does all the ghostbusting, and the movie it entails, present as completely disingenuous? Reitman as a filmmaker mostly retains his keen visual intuition, adequately lensing all the proceedings with a vibrant sheen and dynamic vigor, but as the spawn of not only Ivan Reitman but also tangentially one of cinema’s most cherished comedies, he’s exclusively bound to the past like this revival’s archetypal characters, woefully lacking a vital immediacy or distinctive personality. He traditionally expounds character through a more gradual, lyrical empathy that is heinously misaligned with the relentlessly bloated constraints of the narrative here, deflating it and its people of any real stakes, as weightless as a ghost evaporated by a proton pack. This is all to the chagrin of a capable cast: Rudd and Wolfhard are dependably affable, but the film’s most flagrant net loss may be Grace and Coon, who nobly toil to uphold a vulnerability, humanity and dramatic gravitas that’s egregiously missing from the husk that pervades them.
Properties like Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Stranger Things ushered in a new epoch of nostalgia-pulsed storytelling in Hollywood, and with the current tumultuous state of the world, who can blame someone for wanting to escape to seemingly simpler times? However, those two aforementioned pieces of entertainment astutely utilized nostalgia as a more sophisticated melancholy to illuminate their themes, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife is complacent with allowing this tricky construct to extensively supplant actual substance. This vacuous time capsule of a motion picture is like pantomime for actual sincerity, painstakingly engineered to finesse our endorphins or emotional receptors but not genuinely stimulate them with aplomb. The cultural erasure of the women-led 2016 endeavor is a necessary conversation for a different time, but at least that movie’s shell was imbued with a soul – that enduring essence of wonder or awe that is dishearteningly devoid here.
Grade: D
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is now available in theaters.
Photo Credit / Sony Pictures
