Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) - Movie Review
What if I told you that I was one of the few people who liked 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife? Moreover, what if I told you they made a sequel that lacked any of the charm, wit, or emotional weight of the original?
Let’s discussed.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a 2024 action/comedy brought to us by writer/director Gil Kenan and writer/producer Jason Reitman. So, you can’t even blame a change at creative, unless Jason was less involved this go around. Pretty much the entire original cast returns to the film as well. Sadly, most of them behave as if their character growth from the first movie never happened. Which makes sense considering the film is just a Force Awakens-style rehash of the 1st movie, which was already a rehash of the 1984 original.
The film focuses on the new Ghostbusters company founded by Winston at the end of the previous film. The entire Spengler family have relocated from small town USA to the Big Apple, for better and for worse. The kids have settled in okay, except for nearly getting killed on a daily basis, that is until an ancient evil is awakened and the only ones who stand in its way are the Ghostbusters. As the icy fingers of evil envelope the city and the dead fill the streets, will the team be able to stem the tide and vanquish an ancient god, or will they hit absolute zero?
Sounds familiar right?
Yeah, that’s because it’s the same goddamn plot as the first movie, but without any of the emotional weight, character growth, or goddamn common sense. Ghostbusters has an expansive universe of villains and monsters with fleshed out stories via the many books, video games, and television series. There are untold ideas they could have used.
Oh, you want some examples?
Sure, but I get 10% of any gross proceeds.
Deal? —Good, here we go.
Better idea #1: The family is only in New York on a probationary period, as Winston evaluates their ability to run the business. They’re on a short leash, but are making progress getting the firehouse up to operational shape. Things are all looking up, until Phoebe and Trevor find a hidden safe in Egon’s old office. The other ghostbusters don’t recognize it and Egon never mentioned it to Janine. Thinking that it must have something of value inside, they work to crack the lock, but once opened they find that its contents were anything but treasure. A shadow falls over the firehouse as Egon’s secret is unleashed, and the Boogeyman is finally free to terrorize the world again. Every member of the family will need to confront the fears hiding in their subconscious if they want to defeat Egon’s greatest foe.
See how easy that is? You’ve got the main villain from The Real Ghostbusters, and you’ve got a concept that hasn’t been focused on in the Ghostbusters film franchise. You could also expound on the character growth experienced in the first movie. You could have Trevor preparing to move-out on his own and have Callie struggle with those natural fears of a mother whose child is leaving the nest. Phoebe would then struggle with the normal teenage angst of the focus being on Trevor, when she needs her mother’s guidance as she navigates the terrifying realities of being a woman, and Gary could struggle with being a parent and have to confront the fear all step-parents feel at some point, that they’ll never be considered a real parent by the kids. It’s organic, plays off the original film, but also brings in the larger Ghostbusters universe.
Instead, the rehashed the nostalgiaberries from the first movie, and brought back the desiccated corpse of Bill Murray to deliver half-hearted one-liners from the first film while looking absolutely miserable. Winston is relegated to a handful of scenes that amount to him attempting to parent everyone, and being an exposition machine. Oh and they bring in a half dozen new characters and attempt to give all of the 12 lead characters their own moment, which leads to a film 30 minutes longer than it should be.
This is an eighty-minute treatment stretched to an hour and fifty-five minute runtime and you feel it. My mother is a diehard ghostbusters fan, and defends Afterlife to the death, and her first words to me on the film were, “It’s long and slow.” Which didn’t make sense to me at first, because Afterlife had a longer runtime overall—but then I watched the movie and got it. The film just doesn’t move for big sections, and feels the need to do massive exposition dumps to make up for scenes that had nothing to do with the story, or bad gags that resulted in zero laughs—even from my eight year old.
To be fair, she walked out at the 40 minute mark and never came back. She watched the original film and Afterlife without moving a muscle, so that says a lot.
It isn’t all doom and gloom.
The actors can’t be blamed for being given a threadbare, uninspired script. I mean, the writers made Paul Rudd unlikable—that’s kind of an achievement.
McKenna Grace is the standout of course, and I still believe she is going to be the best in the business if the studios don’t ruin her. It’s clear the she has a natural charisma that can’t be taught. I hope she is able to break off from this franchise and come over to the true horror genre to shine.
Emily Alyn Lind continues to be a revelation. She is one of the most unique looking, charismatic, young actresses. She reminds me of a young Faye Dunaway. She dominates every scene she’s in and I wouldn’t have been mad if they’d pulled the trigger on the love story between the two characters, because their scenes were the only ones that felt real and believable. And yes, I understand the irony that one of the characters is a pyromancing ghost.
Oh, and Carrie Coon continues to be crazy hot even though they continue to attempt to make her ugly. We got your back Carrie!!
Honestly, this feels like a cash grab and the box office shows it worked. However, without moving away from the original films and the original cast—I don’t think this franchise has anywhere to go but deeper into the toilet.
If you do want to watch this movie, it’s streaming free on Netflix as of the time of this review.
