I loved Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It’s a love letter to the 1984 movie that played such a huge role in my childhood. The Phoebe character, Egon’s granddaughter, is extremely well written and extremely well acted. She’s charming and portrays an Aspie with love and kindness. Paul Rudd as the teacher, Gruberman, is excellent as well although he’s criminally underused. Most of the characters are charming with Podcast being a personal favorite.
This movie is obviously a “passing of the torch” movie that’s channeling in equal parts Stranger Things season 1 and Ghostbusters 1984. The main theme of the movie is definitely the concept of family The movie completely ignores the existence of Girlbusters (2016) and Ghostbusters 2. Arguably you could argue that since the movie focuses on Gozer it just glosses over GB2 as having happened but irrelevant – that’s what I choose to believe.
I’m going to nitpick a little bit but nothing here should be interpreted as declaring the movie bad. It’s a solid 8/10, family friendly and I love it.
In terms of set design, ghost design and special effects this is 100% a Ghostbusters movie. All the effects, props and set dressing are directly lifted from and echo the original 1984 movie. There are no liberties taken and no reimaginings taking place. It fits in perfectly with the Ghostbusters universe – that means the ghostbusting gear all looking industrial and homemade, the ghosts are all horrific (not cartoony ala Girlbusters), and tone is very much one of understated humor in a horror driven situation. Precisely what I wanted and expected from a Ghostbusters movie. No slapstick, no cartoonism…the humor relieves the darkness and horror and it emerges from character interactions — not cheesey situations.
The movie does have it’s flaws though. First, all of Trevor’s (Finn Wolfhard) scenes — his entire subplot really — are entirely unneeded and don’t contribute anything to the movie. They also disrupt the flow of the main story in a very abrupt way. I understand that they’re trying to build the new team but he just doesn’t do anything useful except drive the Ecto-1 and flirt with Lucky (Celeste O’Connor). Their acting was well done, the blame for this lay purely on the writers.
The Trevor/Lucky subplot was made even more disruptive by musical score choices. Most of the movie is scored using instrumentals that echo the 1984 score. During the Trevor subplot scenes though they abruptly shift into modern pop music scoring which is incredibly distracting and feels out of place. It’s almost as if it was an entirely different movie that was edited in at the last minute.
If I had my preference, I would have cut out 80% of the flirting with Lucky and added more scenes with her Dad, the Sheriff. Having her and Trevor work to convince her dad that Ghosts are real would have been an interesting subplot foreshadowing the rest of the world being forced to acknowledge that ghosts and Ghostbusting are back in the world again after 30 years of radio silence.
One thing I really loved — it was pure genius really — happened at the beginning of the movie. To establish that Phoebe’s a genius like her granddad they show her rewriting the house. That would have been enough and is what I would expect. BUT! They have one quick scene during the montage of the family driving out to Egon’s farmhouse where the station wagon breaks down and Phoebe fixes it on the side of the road. It’s less than a second long and bookended by other scenes but I love it so much. It just demonstrates the level of attention they gave everything and how much they respected working on the film.
Speaking of the family, they do a great job managing realistic loving family moments. Kudos.
We need to talk about Gozer though. The temple and her emergence are great! I did find her new voice distracting and a little disappointing but no normal person is going to notice that…I just watched the movie so much growing up that her voice is burned into my memory.
Where the movie fails though, and I would say this is it’s biggest failure, is that the stakes feel a lot lower in this movie. It builds up Gozer and her emergence as this incredibly deadly, world ending event but once she’s out…no one really takes her seriously.
In the 1984 movie Gozer is terrifying to the world, to NYC and to the Ghostbusters. Gozer’s moving fast to end the world and the boys only stop her after getting their butts kicked and only with a little fast thinking. In Afterlife, Gozer seems to just want to chill out and relax. She lounges on the steps of her temple as a middle school girl (Phoebe) tells her jokes before striking up what seems like causal conversation with a bored god (“So are you here to sacrifice yourself or what?”). Gone is the Gozer that wants to destroy all of humanity and she’s been replaced with a Gozer that just wants to kick back and relax.
This “Gozer isn’t really a threat” feeling continues into the Climax when the remaining three original Ghostbusters show up and spend time cracking wise against Gozer. There’s no fear or concern from any of them, they look at this world ending god like a drunken ex embarrassing herself. There’s just no weight to the situation.
Muncher, however, was brilliantly handled. In fact, the hunt for Muncher feels like it carries a lot more weight and risk than any of the characters’ interactions with Gozer. Showing their struggle to learn ghostbusting and the lethal threat that Muncher poses to the team is just great.
Going back to Gozer. The lore they build around Gozer is great, the backstory of Egon’s work is amazing and everything upto and including Gozer being freed is top notch. It’s only after she’s free and seems disinterested in actually ending the world that things become a little bland. She also feels simultaneously powered up and powered down at the same time. I like that they show she’s learned about crossing the streams and the “Ghostbusters surprise” won’t work on her a second time. Gods learn, that’s awesome and appreciated. The way they stopped her though (Without spoiling it) felt more appropriate to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon than something following in the footsteps of the movie. What makes this worse is that it could have been easily fixed with a little techno-babble using their existing structure. (“Egon made a super trap fit for a god” not “Egon made a malfunctioning set of giant capacitors that power a bunch of normal traps.”) Heck, even pull out some of the new gear that was only shown in the GB2 montage scenes and use that.
As a lore geek, here are my two “world building questions.” First, how long can a trap contain a ghost? The trap seems powered down based off their need to power it with jumper cables. Following that up: The handle is really the electrical ground for the trap? That seems unsafe.
Second, they say that the firehouse was turned into a Starbucks. If that happened, who was maintaining the containment unit full of ghosts for all of that time? We know it can be turned off by flipping a switch so you probably don’t want random baristas around it and it also consumes a lot of power which means the coffee shop probably doesn’t want to pay that power bill every month. Of course, the government also knows — for a fact — that ghosts exist even if they aren’t making appearances anymore…so surely they would be doing something to protect and maintain the containment unit lest all the captured spirits be released out into the world again.
Overall I love the movie. It’s great for adults and kids. I can’t say enough good things about it and my super geek nitpicking shouldn’t be interpreted as trashing the movie.