Film Review - Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Ghostbusters Frozen Empire is the follow up to 2021’s Ghostbusters Afterlife and this time Gil Kenan takes the directorial chair instead of Jason Reitman who directed Afterlife and is the son of the late genius Ivan Reitman, this story sees the Spengler family (Mackenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd and Finn Wolfhard) living and working as Ghostbusters in New York City when Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) comes into possession of a mysterious orb that contains a powerful ice goddess who if unleashed could bring about a new ice age in a New York Summer.

Frozen Empire isn’t a bad movie per se but it is also a movie that in all honestly isn’t really much of anything either and in the very small group I saw this in the cinema with all it raised was a chuckle at best and that was mainly at the “look who’s shown up” variety as well which isn’t great for a Ghostbusters movie on either front.

The main problem this movie has is in its scripting, it takes far too long to get it’s main plot into motion and when it does it doesn’t have any of the stakes or horror or comedy or scale that it really should and what the original Ghostbusters movie which celebrates it’s 40th anniversary this year had, it had great laughs, it had great horror moments, it had great visual effects, a comedy cast on top form and an iconic movie monster but then again Ivan Reitman was a genius for the most part so that was no real surprise.

It also doesn’t help that this movie is also the first big movie to be released after Dune Part Two 3 and a half weeks ago and that movie showed what movies really could be when you had a passionate creative team and a willing and able cast working their hardest to deliver something special for audiences whereas here the cast does what they can but no one really gets a chance to shine.

William Atherton from the original is basically a “remember him” fan service cameo, Patton Oswalt only gets one scene which feels like a waste as he fits right in with this universe, the OG Ghostbusters are either exposition dumps on legs or fan service cameos or in the case of Bill Murray here to cash an easy cheque because he was in lockdown for 2 years and wants some easy money plus due to COVID he missed out on being in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last year and as for the Spengler family their okay and Coon and Rudd have some good chemistry but they don’t really get to show it, Wolfhard really only exists to have an excuse for Slimer coming back and Grace well she does get a subplot of her own but it doesn’t really add much to the greater storytelling.

And so that was Ghostbusters Frozen Empire and once more Columbia Pictures a studio celebrating 100 years this year has delivered another lazy blockbuster, in my State of the Studios roundup last year I said that they really needed to both lift their game and stop relying on Spider-Man to save them and with this and now Madame Web being lazy hangabouts in cinemas that feeling is stronger than ever, 2 out of 5.