Ghostbusters Afterlife is directed and co-written by Jason Reitman the son of Ivan Reitman (who is fantastic I think a Genius) and this story takes place in a small Oklahoma town where a single mother (Carrie Coon) and her two children (Mackenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard) inherit an old run down dirt farm but while they start to find their way in this new home strange things start happening and well when that happens, Who You Gonna Call?
Ghostbusters Afterlife is an interesting sequel in that it completely ignores the 2016 reboot/sequel that Paul Feig directed and continues on from 1989’s Ghostbusters II only recognising that and the 1984 original film though this new film delayed from 2020 due to the pandemic felt for me a little disjointed.
And that disjointment comes down mainly to the storytelling, on one hand it feels like the kind of small family drama Jason Reitman made his name making before he committed to making this movie, one part feels like a Stranger Things episode while another part feels like the long developed and planned Ghostbusters 3 that died along with Harold Ramis when he very sadly passed away in 2014 and two of those parts are more interesting than the one.
The two that worked for me was the Family Drama and Ghostbusters 3 segments, those I thought were quite good and held my interest, the Ghostbusters 3 segment was easily the highlight though thanks to the return of the original cast who still have that great comedic chemistry and it makes me wish all the more that they had anchored the entire film as their backstory and scenes made for a far more interesting film than the one I’m writing about here.
The family drama segment meanwhile is pretty good and its here I felt Jason Reitman was back in territory he feels most comfortable in finding his own voice instead of channelling his father who is fantastic (and a Genius) but the least interesting segment is what I called the Stranger Things episode segment which is where the kids take centre stage and their not bad I quite like Mackenna Grace and she would make a great Penny from Inspector Gadget as well as Finn Wolfhard but I just didn’t find their storyline segment all that interesting.
As for the new Ghosts well their okay but they just feel like a repeat of what had come before and were done better there, the mini Stay Puft men are cute but feel more like Gremlins knockoffs and Muncher a take on the famous ghost Slimer was okay but kind of forgettable.
And so that was Ghostbusters Afterlife and its okay but like the Matrix Resurrections recently it only really highlights how both the original Ghostbusters and Matrix films were instant classics when they first came out and broke the mold in technical and storytelling ways only to get mediocre sequels and continuations, just stick with the first film and leave it at that, 2 out of 5.
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