Film Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Images courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Nostalgia works in funny ways, there’s many different means through which it can be interpreted. So, when I saw old 80’s tech lying around a shabby farm in Oklahoma, Ghostbusters: Afterlife seemed to be a fun call-back to the time spent at my grandparents in a small country town as a child… to everyone else in the cinema it was the first time that they’d seen the Ecto-1 rev its engine in around three decades. Suffice to say, I was not the intended audience for this nostalgia-bomb.

Build-up to Afterlife paints the movie as a direct sequel to the original two, but I’ve only seen the original Ghostbusters’ movies once or twice, so I was thankful when Afterlife acted as more of a soft reboot. The references to the originals, the easter eggs, the throwaway gags, the obligatory so-not-even-close-to-subtle-why-did-they-even-do-that ‘who you gonna call?’ line, they’re all there! But what’s also there is a nice spin on the summer vacation movie as a city-slickin’ family takes to the country due to the death of their unknown grandfather.

It’s a nice setup for an easy-to-handle plot for the boring movie-goers who are brave enough to watch the sequels without the prequels, which is presumably going to be a sizeable chunk of this movie’s audience, opening in Australia on New Year’s Day 2022 as a family friendly sequel to an 80’s cult classic. The cast chosen for the new roles are solid and all clearly having fun with the source material. McKenna Grace as Phoebe makes an almost unbelievably smart, nerdy outcast, Paul Rudd earns his paycheck as a hapless summer schoolteacher, and Carrie Coon is easy to invest in as a single mother with two kids in a new environment. The real eye-raiser I was worried about going into Afterlife had to be Finn Wolfhard as Trevor, it had me thinking that Stranger Things clout was the prime objective of this Ghostbusters movie… I was tickled pink when the only comparison to be drawn was the fun little moment where we get to see Finn in a real Ghostbusters suit instead of the Halloween costume.

Afterlife’s looks deserve a special shoutout here, the movie’s gorgeous. I said it felt like a summer vacation movie because even though it is a permanent move for the family, the golden sunsets and shanty-town style setups in local shops all seemingly glow as we spend maybe a little too long getting to know the town and the cast. When lasers fly from the Ghost Gun as the Ecto-1 shreds the shaking streets of Summerville, that’s when Afterlife shines brightest, with stunning practical effects instilling the same love of the original Ghostbusters appreciated immensely throughout Afterlife.

 I’m still salty they’ve erased the 2016 reboot though.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is showing in cinemas across Australia from the 1st of January 2022.