Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) A Review from Someone Who Grew Up With and Loves Ghostbusters
Whelp, the new Ghostbusters film is out. I have seen it. I liked it. I’ve summarised my findings here. You may read them or not. The spoilers are not until the end and are very clearly marked so you should be quite safe ❤️
The stuff I liked
There is a lot to like about this film. Its biggest selling point is its heart: it clearly loves the source material.
“A steady paycheque” and an “authentic wacko”
Winston and Ray did, indeed, give me chills when they returned. It was everything I’d hoped it might be.
I will happily pay to see any movie that involves Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd strap on their proton packs and try to save the world. Seeing Winston Zeddemore actually get proper service from the script (albeit 75% in a post-credits scene) is wonderful and I’m so glad that it’s there.
It brought a much needed depth to the character and finally pays off on something Winston was meant to have back in ’84, before his lines got cut by over 50% and most of his best quips were given to Bill Murray.
Ernie Hudson is a wonderful fellow who, despite being mercilessly screwed over by Ghostbusters, delights in the simple joy of being recognised in the street and making someone’s day because they met Winston Zeddemore.
Dan Aykroyd loves Ghostbusters and it shows. He’s genuine, thoughtful and brings a depth of belief to the story that keeps it running. He’s a well-known ghost-head in real life and keeps notebooks of ideas for how things in Ghostbusters might work — a lot of which showed up in 2009’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
His great-grandfather was apparently a Victorian ghostbuster himself!
Aykroyd’s simple enthusiasm and joy for Ghostbusters is just beautiful.
Between these two (and a very loving homage to Harold Ramis, who sadly left us in 2014) there is a lot of heart in this film.
“What are you supposed to be, some kind of cosmonaut?”
The actors are all excellent. End of point.
Particularly the younger actors playing Egon’s extended family. Particularly Paul Rudd. Particularly the three remaining Ghostbusters. Particularly whichever underpaid voiceover sibling of mine voiced the tiny Mr. Stay Pufts (Misters Stay Puft? Mr. Stays Puft?).
Through the actors’ work and some solid dialogue and character building I can safely say I liked all the characters. They all had personality, spark and helped bring the film alive.
No notes.
Well, except this one… whether unintentionally or not, they’ve coded Phoebe Spengler (the youngest of Egon’s grandchildren) with autistic traits. It would have been an excellent statement to offer that role to an autistic actor. Many actors don’t get enough work, and the additional complexity for those of us with a ‘quirk’ (be it disability, gender identity, something else) is that we often find it hard to get cast because the director will say “Oh, but this character isn’t disabled/trans/autistic/whatever”. It would be a Good Thing if, in this case, an autistic character could have been realised by an autistic actor.
“It’s when you started introducing me as ‘The Old Ball-and-Chain’, that’s when I left.”
Make no mistake, this movie was made by people who love Ghostbusters.
The absolute love that shines through is just… beautiful. The people who made this, performed in it, worked on it and inspired it all love the concept and the world Ghostbusters inhabits.
“My dad says you guys are full of crap and that’s why you went out of business.”
A cheap film storytelling trick averted. Well played.
The film neatly sidesteps one of the issues that bothers me about Ghostbusters II. In the first sequel (1989), the Ghostbusters are washed up and reduced to performing at childrens’ parties. Apparently everyone thinks they’re frauds and, since the ghost activity has dried up in the Big Apple, there’s nothing to prove them wrong!
It’s a cheap trick that pops up in films: the viewer will assume something makes sense… provided the details are woolly and it happened off-screen.
In this case, the New York of Ghostbusters II apparently has no collective memory of a massive spate of hauntings, a 100' tall marshmallow man walking down 5th Avenue or a phantasmic cross-rip drowning Manhattan Island in darkness!
Ghostbusters: Afterlife deftly foxtrots around that. Those events in Ghostbusters still happened. Many people remember them or remember hearing about it on the news. But, since then, spectral activity has dropped to nearly nothing so people have just moved on and forgotten about the Ghostbusters — other than as a piece of retro 1980’s New York life.
They weren’t frauds and didn’t magically vanish from the collective consciousness: they just got older and moved on. Presumably the only affect by the time of Afterlife is that ghosts are now taken seriously as a phenomenon, albeit a historical one!
“But the kids love us!”
I’m genuinely so pleased that young people, born 20 years after Ghostbusters came out, legitimately enjoyed watching this in the cinema.
For whatever criticisms I have, Jason Reitman has obviously crafted something which appeals to both cynical, older Millennials like me and the fresh-out-of-the-box Gen Z (and their little Generation Alpha relatives). That is not nothing and it is a very… good feeling knowing that something you were watching back in the 1980’s is loved by a whole new cohort of fans.
The Stuff I Didn’t Like
Yep, you knew it was coming. I have some… criticisms. Don’t take away from them that Afterlife is bad. It most definitely isn’t. It just made some… choices that subtract from its qualities.
“Think we’re stuck… think we’re stuck… think we’re stuck?”
I don’t ‘get’ Bill Murray and I probably never will.
I’m in the rare minority who doesn’t particularly rate Bill Murray. I love some of his films (well, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day and Caddy Shack) but his other performances often leave me cold and reports of him as a person don’t paint a flattering picture.
Murray reportedly made filming Groundhog Day so unbearable with his endless drama, his prima-donna attitidue and mean-spirited antics that Harold Ramis (directing) reportedly threw him against a wall by his collar! The atmosphere was so bad that Murray and Ramis didn’t talk together again until Ramis’ death bed!
There are many known instances of Murray being a selfish diva, an allegedly abusive partner and just all-around prick. I personally don’t find the reports of him noogy-ing people on the subway and quipping “no-one will believe you!” to be restorative to his reputation.
This is the same great guy who (again, allegedly) got Lorenzo Music fired as the voice of Peter Venkman on The Real Ghostbusters show because he wanted his cartoon counterpart to sound more like him!
Quite why he agreed to perform in the 2009 Ghostbusters: The Video Game is beyond me. Murray was obviously utterly disinterested in the role and delivered everything with the listlessness of a man being forced to clean the toilet.
With my Murray-Sceptical credentials firmly laid out and explained, I didn’t get the chills that other people apparently did seeing him back as Peter Venkman. Aykroyd and Hudson affected me — absolutely they did. Those two (plus Harold Ramis) were like superheroes to me as a child… but then they actually play characters. They play those same characters here in Afterlife.
Murray just does that thing he does now — perfectly demonstrated in 2020’s On the Rocks — where he turns up, puts on a strangely high-and-soft voice and coasts on an aura of ‘oh hey it’s me Bill Murray and I’m doing stuff!’
I guess if you love him and think he’s what ‘made’ the original Ghostbusters movie work then you’ll love him here too. I think that credit should go to his co-stars — especially the writing of Ramis and Aykroyd. Fight me!
Importance: 2/5.
“This ‘stiff’ happens to be one of the finest musicians in the world!”
My word. The music was repetitive and distracting.
Much like Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which for its faults I still absolutely adore, Ghostbusters: Afterlife suffers from a chronically unimaginative score.
The main riff from the first film (Main Title Theme by Elmer Bernstein) is absolutely beaten to death. It, or echoes of it, show up in scene after scene with so little variation. Dana’s Theme pops up almost as often and receives a similar clobbering.
The original movie punctuated the incidental music with Ray Parker Jnr. (Ghostbusters), the Busboys (Cleanin’ Up the Town), the Alessi Brothers (Savin’ the Day), Mick Smiley (Magic) and a bunch of others. Its soundtrack also fit it’s style, ethos and time.
Both the 2009 game and Afterlife are so desperate to connect to the original film that they both massively overuse the film’s incidental music. Don’t misunderstand me: you want to use it a little. You want the odd refrain to come back and ‘haunt’ other tracks… but you do need some other tracks. It needs its own personality and variety.
Hearing a 2021 film backed almost exclusively by 3–4 tracks from a very 1984 soundtrack is weird and frankly distracting.
Importance: 3/5.
“Who you gonna call?” “He-Man!”
Do you ever wonder about those pop songs which are not only covers but they’re so close to the original that they pose the question “why did you bother?” You’ve brought nothing new to this other than the vanity of you singing it instead of the original artist!
Yeah, this is a big one and it’s a hard one to explain without spoilers.
Consider Ghostbusters II. Plot-wise it feels very much like Columbia Pictures said “hey, people enjoyed that Ghostbusters movie! Let’s do that again!”
The main plot-beats of Ghostbusters II directly echo the first movie: the guys aren’t Ghostbusters, then they get their first case in Dana Barrett, then a high-profile bust and they’re in business! But oh no! There’s a big bad (localised to a creepy building with a dopey schmuck who’s hot for Dana) and the Ghostbusters have to save the world! Also there’s usually a giant something-or-other that’ll take a walk down 5th Avenue.
Even if you like Ghostbusters II, and I certainly don’t hate it — I just think it’s the least-good of the four films we now have — you must concede that it’s plot looks very similar to the original movie!
Now, for Afterlife, imagine that scenario… but not with plot-beats so much as whole scenes being almost line-for-line retrodden. It’s done with love, and it is a beautiful homage in many places, but never-the-less the near entire Third Act is basically new actors karaoke-ing bits from Ghostbusters.
There’s loving homage and then there’s just chaining yourself to the floor, and this decision just landed on the wrong side of that equation for me.
Importance: 4/5. I’ve seen the first film, I’d now like to see another please!
“In case you forget, Peter, I was present at an unexplained undersea mass sponge migration!”
My God, continuity is a mess now. I mean, Ghostbusters (2016), The Real Ghostbusters, the original comics and the IDW comics all lived in their own separate universes, but now the main film is splintering into a multiverse too!
This is a nerdy one, but it’s a big one. If you didn’t grow up with Ghostbusters or you just don’t remember anything other than the first movie: keep scrolling. You’re fine. You don’t need to read this and it likely won’t interest you.
If you grew up with Ghostbusters, then you saw Ghostbusters II. You read the comics and watched The Real Ghostbusters cartoon. You played the 2009 video game which Dan Aykroyd has very much confirmed is the third instalment in the story.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife completely ignores everything after the first 1984 movie (with the exception of a cameo of Ray’s Occult Book Store from Ghostbusters II). Vigo the Carpathian? No mention of him. That time the boys-in-grey rode the Statue of Liberty downtown to the Manhattan Museum of Art? No record of it.
All anybody mentions is Gozer and the events of Ghostbusters — the New York Cross-rip. It’s strongly implied that after that, nothing happened.
Even technical changes we saw in Ghostbusters II are reversed. The upgraded Ecto-1A has reverted back to the Ecto-1. The slime blowers are nowhere to be seen: they use only the original proton packs and particle throwers.
The video game is also ignored. I won’t go into details which would spoil the movie, but there is no way what happens in Ghostbusters: The Video Game fits in with Afterlife.
And yes, before some clever dick pipes up with “Oh maybe X, Y and Z happened” I’ll head you off at the pass: if you’re desperate enough you can fanwank yourself into oblivion and explain anything away. Let’s be realistic: it’s pretty clear that the video game is now out of canon (boo!) and Ghostbusters II still technically happened (word of God) but we don’t speak of it or anything about it.
Importance: 3/5. I found this very distracting. If you only casually remember the first film (or you just don’t care about the sequel and the game) then you’ll be fine.
Summary
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is shot, acted and directed with nothing but love and admiration for its source material. The actors are all excellent, although given the autism-coding for Phoebe it would have been respectful to see an autistic actor cast. Paul Rudd is delightful. It’s all done with a profound joy and genuine affection. I squeaked with delight when the remaining Ghostbusters arrived to save the day, I got chills when the kids finally activated the Ecto-1 siren and lights and Ray Parker Jnr. will always bring me joy even if his anthem is criminally underused, only showing up at the very end over the credits. I guess Jason was worried the Zoomers would think it totes cringe?
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is also absolutely unnecessary. Its new, interesting, original characters are sadly kinda lost in the Third Act. They’re still there and doing stuff, but get drowned out by a protracted homage to the original 1984 movie that borders on karaoke.
Tonally, Afterlife is also just a little too serious. This isn’t a comedy — it’s a family fantasy movie with comedic moments. Remember: both Ghostbusters (1984), Ghostbusters II and Ghostbusters (2016)* were all comedies and were fronted by SNL alumni. Personally I’d prefer the tone a little less reverential and a little more silly.
It’s a well made, beautiful exercise in nostalgia crafted by very talented people and brought to life with some wonderful performances. I’d have preferred to see Dan Aykroyd handle the writing (to avoid the weird inconsistencies with other established canon) and an original villain.
It’s really only a 3/5… but it has so much heart and treats a property I love dearly with such tenderness that I can’t give it less than 4/5. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror and quietly make the Ecto-1 siren sound to myself again. Reee-ooow, Reee-ooow…
*before you ask, I love the 2016 reboot. It was fun, fast and had Ghostbusters through its DNA to the core. The cast were great and it brought an anarchic joy whilst obviously still loving the source material. No, it’s not as good as the original but what could be? It’s still better than Ghostbusters II.
Spoilers
Don’t read farther than this if you want to avoid spoilers!
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Plot Summary
Ivo Shandor, the guy who in the 1940s built the high-rise building as a tool to summon Gozer in the first movie, apparently also had a mine which was for exactly the same purpose. Gozer tries to return every *cough* years, so if the penthouse at Spook Central didn’t work out, maybe the mine would. Egon Spengler gave up his friends, family and ultimately his life to try and guard it. Vince Clortho (The Keymaster) and Zuul (The Gatekeeper) return as Terror Dogs to bring Gozer back to life… who now looks a lot like Billy Porter. The Ghostbusters are shy one Egon but luckily they have his daughter, granddaughter and grandson. Oh and Egon’s ghost. Together they zap The Destructor and activate Egon’s last plan: sucking Gozer into a bunch of traps, presumably breaking the cycle of their return. Unless those traps open. Which they almost certainly will.
Unanswered Questions
Where Slimer at, tho?
Ray said the firehouse was now a Starbucks… but post-credits we see Winston return to it and it’s obviously been abandoned for many years.
Who’s been paying the electricity bill to keep the containment unit on in the basement of the firehouse? Assuming it wasn’t modified to be nuclear powered, like the proton packs are…
So the Spenglers are still broke..? Nothing in this movie fixes that or anything… do they just live in Egon’s creepy old farmhouse now and slowly starve?
Why didn’t Gozer have to ‘assume a form’? The first movie establishes (and the video game develops further) that for Gozer to properly enter our world they must assume a shape and, because Gozer is big into irony, that shape must be chosen by a representative of the people Gozer is going to annihilate. In Afterlife, Gozer is just resurrected, rips Ivo Shandor in two (lengthwise!) and then just starts doing Gozer stuff… which mostly involves chilling on a throne and looking fabulous. I’ll not deny them the chance to look superb, but still…
How many other Shandorian places/things will show up? Seriously: find a new villain! Shandor kicked off the events that would lead to Ghostbusters, he’s the end-boss in the video game and here he is again! Did he also paint that portrait of Vigo? Did he suggest to Slimer that green goes with anything it may ask? Is there a Shandor Ice Cream Parlour out there with some Gozer-summoning-sprinkles?
Where’s my boy Slimer at?
So Gozer is now trapped. Properly. Forever. End of. Not again. Nosiree. Not getting out of those traps. Nuh-uh. … er… Gozer is totally getting out of those trips, right? Oh look, that one seems to be opening…
When the kids drive the Ecto-1 through the field and then kinda stunt-jump her up and onto the road, that should have destroyed the car. Seriously. That style of Cadillac weighs 2.2 tons before you add on all the ghostbusting equipment! Watch the first two movies and check out how much she tilts when she corners! Jumping her into the air and landing back on tarmac would have broken her back!
It seems a bit out-of-character that Ray, of all people, didn’t believe Egon. Apparently once the spooks in New York started drying up, and ghostbusting became financially impractical, Egon went off the deep end with a belief that there was some cataclysmic event coming. He left the Ghostbusters, left his new family and moved near to the epicentre of this future disaster: Shandor’s mine. Didn’t Ray visit even once? He could have seen Shandor’s loony-tunes mine/Gozer-themed establishment for himself! Or he could have followed up on Spengler’s research?
Why did Gozer ask the Ghostbusters if they were gods? They clearly remember the boys from last time (and it’s even called out in the dialogue!) so is that just how Gozer says hello? Of course the real answer is “so we can riff on that bit from the first movie…”
Based on Callie Spengler’s family, we can assume she’s probably 40ish if she has a 15 year old son. That would put her birth date in the early 1980s. For the freeze-framers out there, Egon has some notes in his lab that peg her birth date around 1983 — so he had a family before the first movie! It’d be nice if that were explored more in the future.
Why did Ivo Shandor put his body in the mine? The building in Central Park West was his A-Plan to meet-n-greet Gozer, so surely he should have been interred there? Or (as a potential crackpot way to keep the video game canon) are there multiple Ivo Shandors? Er… Ivos Shandor? Shandii?
Also, what was Shandor expecting to happen when he comes face to face with Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, Gozer The Traveller, Lord of the Sebouillia? Their reputation is well established and literally boils down to: kills everyone, a lot, horribly. Was he expecting a hearty handshake and a Rolex for his service? Assuming there’s some cross-eyed way the video game is still canon, it makes even less sense given Shandor’s betrayal of Gozer.
How long do the batteries in the ghost traps last? I always understood they were temporary — you move the ghost to the containment unit. Egon managed to keep a Terror Dog trapped in one for at least a week or two from his death until his family arrive.
Ditto the PKE meter. Doesn’t it need charging after lying on the floor for some time? Actually, scratch that. Knowing Egon (and Ray) the little sucker’s probably nuclear… in fact probably so are the traps… it’s a wonder these guys don’t hurt themselves more often!
I love the idea that Winston pays the rent of Ray’s Occult Books. It’ll have to turn a profit one day!
Yo! Where that Slimer?
I can’t readily think of an explanation why the Cadillac ambulance modifications were reverted from the Ecto-1A back to the Ecto-1… but it does make sense they got rid of the Ghostbusters II ‘No Ghost’ logo. Seriously: that logo only made sense if the characters knew they were in a sequel!
SOMEONE is going to take the time to go through the phone book and see if there are any more Shandor-named businesses/factories/nail salons/whatever right? It’s not like he was even subtle and used an alias! So, someone will go through the phone book, right? …Right? Someone? Oh hey, my Amazon parcel is being delivered by the Shandor Shipping and Gozer Enthusiast Company! Not at all sus.
