Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Review: Ghosts Of Blockbuster Past Hold Back The Franchise's Future
With "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," director Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air," "Juno") sparked a new direction for the sci-fi comedy franchise pioneered by his father, filmmaker Ivan Reitman. Much like the younger Reitman taking the reins of his father's cinematic history, the film grappled with the legacy of the movies that came before by delivering an Amblin-esque family adventure soaked in the nostalgia of the original "Ghostbusters." The result landed somewhere in the middle of being wonderfully entertaining and borderline self-indulgent, and that's coming from someone who has nothing but respect for the groundbreaking 1984 hit that came before it.
Two years later, the spook-nabbing franchise is continuing with "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire," this time directed by "Monster House" filmmaker Gil Kenan. Leaving behind the dusty, rural Oklahoma setting of "Afterlife," the sequel brings the action back to New York City, where the unconventional Spengler family have been handed the baton, or rather neutron wand, of the original Ghostbusters. Having learned that there was a method to Egon Spengler's neglectful madness, Egon's 15-year-old granddaughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), her newly 18-year-old brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), her nonchalant mother Callie (Carrie Coon), and summer school teacher turned potential step-dad Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) have all entered the family business, working out of the original Ghostbusters firehouse and capturing ghosts across the Big Apple. Honestly, it feels like there's an entire movie that we missed between "Afterlife" and "Frozen Empire" in order to get here.
Anyway, while it feels like this misfit family has found their groove, not unlike the original ragtag team of college professors who became paranormal exterminators, a record scratch is about to stop the wheels rolling on the Ecto-1 (which has some cool upgrades, like a flying drone ghost trap). After a cross-town ghost chase results in damage to city property, the Spenglers (and Gary) get called in by the Mayor of New York City, who just so happens to be Walter Peck (William Atherton), the former Environmental Protection Agency adversary from the original "Ghostbusters," and he's sick of them doing their job, especially if it means wreaking havoc across the city. Here comes the first inciting incident!
So many characters
Forget the fact that, for 30 years, the citizens of New York came to believe that the events of the first two "Ghostbusters" movies were just some kind of elaborate hoax, because the writers certainly seem to have forgotten this. Peck seems to now accept that what the Ghostbusters do is legitimate. Regardless, he's still been looking for the perfect excuse to shut them down, and he gets one step closer to upending their operation when he learns that Phoebe is not only a minor executing dangerous tasks, like hanging out of a moving vehicle with a nuclear accelerator on her back, but she's unpaid for her work as one of the Ghostbusters. Using the bureaucratic excuse of child labor, Peck prohibits Phoebe from continuing the ghostbusting gig that has given her some sense of belonging, setting her off on a woeful character arc straight out of a coming-of-age movie.
The dynamic between the Spengler family and their cautiously willing prospective step-dad, played splendidly by Paul Rudd, makes for a group of characters who would have been great as the driving force of a "Ghostbusters" movie on their own. The problem is that the sequel also has to incorporate the legacy characters of Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), and even secretary turned business manager Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) to keep pulling the threads of the original franchise.
But that's not all, because for some reason, "Afterlife" supporting characters Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) and the unfortunately named Podcast (Logan Kim), two characters who previously lived in the Oklahoma town that the Spengler grandkids found themselves in, have been given contrived reasons to be in New York too. And we haven't even gotten to the most prominent new characters, which include Lars (British comedian James Acaster, in his feature film debut), the new Ghostbusters Paranormal Research Center scientist, and Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani), a slacker who has taken to selling his deceased grandmother's antiques, which is how Ray's Occult Books comes into possession of a brass orb that is giving off so much psychokinetic energy that it overloads one of the trusty PKE meters. And there's our second inciting incident, though most of the film's runtime doesn't seem to treat it with much urgency. That's because there are too many different characters vying for our attention in "Frozen Empire."
A ghostly girlfriend
There's actually an aspect to the story that hasn't even been revealed in the marketing. While it's maybe the most ambitious element of "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire," it's often overshadowed and sidelined in favor of nostalgia and a half-baked blockbuster plot. While Phoebe is feeling lost and vulnerable after being banned from working as one of the Ghostbusters, she goes to play chess by herself in the park at night (undoubtedly one of the safest things an outcast 15-year-old girl can do in New York City). As she begins to play, an invisible force starts playing the other side's pieces. We've seen this before, and previously it turned out to be the ghost of Egon Spengler. Thankfully, "Frozen Empire" isn't re-opening that closed door, but instead, it's opening up a strange new one.
The ghost playing chess with Phoebe is revealed to be a 16-year-old girl named Melody, played by Emily Alyn Lind ("Gossip Girl"). Melody died in a fire, and other than Egon, she's the least monstrous ghost that the franchise has ever encountered. Though she's tinted blue and ethereal like your average ghost, flames occasionally flicker around her body. Otherwise, she's an alluringly quirky though slightly ominous teenage girl, and there's a flirtatious bond that rises between Phoebe and Melody. While this raises lots of questions about the hierarchy of the ghost world and why almost all of the other ghosts we've encountered in this franchise look like horrifying monsters, it also makes for a compelling character arc for Phoebe, albeit one that unfortunately feels out of place among the rest of the usual "Ghostbusters" elements. It's a shame, because Phoebe was the heart of "Afterlife," and that heart is still beating in "Frozen Empire," but there's still too much emphasis on the old guard to allow her story to truly shine.
One of the biggest problems narratively is that, as this ghostly relationship goes on, it motivates Phoebe to do something paranormal that has never been touched upon in "Ghostbusters" before. This would have been an exciting development, but it's introduced and executed so haphazardly with almost no pretext, that it basically stops the movie dead in its tracks. Consider it akin to the Force-bond shared by Kylo Ren and Rey in "The Last Jedi," but unleashed in a sudden, extremely jarring fashion. While Phoebe and Melody's relationship ends up being the final piece of an ongoing mystery surrounding the aforementioned ancient brass orb, unleashing the chilling, deadly ghost teased in the "Frozen Empire" trailers, it all feels like too little too late. At one point, I checked the time on my phone, and there were 30 minutes left in the movie, but New York City had yet to be frozen, and the icy, horned villain Garraka had not yet shown up. It's a long lead that begins with a flashback to New York City in 1902 at the very start of the movie, and it just doesn't deliver a good enough payoff to be worth the wait.
The rest of the ghouls
Speaking of which, when we're not focused on Phoebe's ghostly girlfriend, we're watching her poke around with Ray, Podcast, Lars, Lucky, and sometimes Trevor to figure out exactly what's up with the brass orb. Despite breaking a PKE meter, Ray doesn't ask the Paranormal Research Center to make it a top priority. Even after Lars and Lucky inadvertently lose power in the entire lab after trying to extract the spirit within the orb using new Ghostbusters technology, there's no urgency to further understand it.
There's also no other real lingering threat from other ghosts throughout the movie, despite the presence of specters that are being studied in the lab. Sure, the loss of power in the lab results in a moment of tension where it seems like a sinister spirit and a tiny little spark of a ghost that possesses inanimate objects might become a problem, but only one of them turns out to cause trouble, and it's only to further the larger plot. Honestly, the most entertaining paranormal activity in "Frozen Empire," other than the opening chase after a sewer dragon ghost, is the return of the mischievous Mini Pufts, the diabolical, tiny versions of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man who always seem to be burning, stabbing, tearing, and melting each other in amusingly twisted ways. They're like the Gremlins of the "Ghostbusters" universe, and even though it makes zero sense for them to still be around after the fall of Gozer in "Afterlife," they're a lot of fun.
Yes, Slimer is back in "Frozen Empire" too, but he really only exists to give Trevor something to do while all the other characters are busy. Even though he's brought to life again beautifully with practical effects, his presence feels shoehorned in for the sake of nostalgia. Honestly, the same can be said for the presence of the original cast too. Their involvement could have and should have been minimal, but much like Ray seems desperate to keep his golden years alive by being part of the Ghostbusters again, co-writers Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman couldn't help but serve up another helping of original Ghostbusters to keep the longtime fans feeling good. But as one of those dedicated fans, I can safely say that the best option for the "Ghostbusters" franchise is to let the next generation take charge without dragging the old gang along. While it's fun to see Janine suited up in Ghostbusters gear and Venkman grabbing an old bottle of whiskey hidden in the firehouse, the roster of characters is far too big and too difficult to maintain in a satisfying way.
A frustrating metaphor
Once the Ghostbusters figure out the elements needed to thwart the threat of Garraka, including a more mystical move that feels like something out of "Big Trouble in Little China," the lead-up to the finale's heroics has taken far too long for us to care anymore. As cool as Garraka looks as a villain, he's ultimately not very menacing to our characters. While this might work as a gateway movie for kids to get into horror and sci-fi, with a slightly more adult-tinged comedic angle throughout, the third act is clumsy and small. The original "Ghostbusters" managed to make a finale that took place on the rooftop of a New York apartment feel thrilling, funny, and epic. But when the third act of "Frozen Empire" unfolds solely in the Ghostbusters firehouse, it feels cheap, especially when the time comes for the nearly dozen characters in the movie to face Garraka at once.
Without spoiling too many specifics, there's a moment in the climax when the original Ghostbusters and Janine are working together to reconfigure the broken ghost containment in an effort to get it working again while all the new Ghostbusters are crowded around Phoebe, supporting her in a final heroic moment. This is the perfect metaphor for this new "Ghostbusters" franchise: the original cast tries to prop up something old in order to keep it working well enough, while the new cast stands behind the breakout main character as she does something inventive with old Ghostbusters tools. Sadly, bringing these two elements together only results in a somewhat ambitious but messy and ultimately unsatisfying sequel, despite packing some decent laughs and a couple of genuinely exhilarating sequences. While there are aspects of "Frozen Empire" that may remind fans of the expanded spiritual lore that came with "The Real Ghostbusters" animated series, it never coalesces into a solid blockbuster. It's dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria.
/Film Rating: 5 out of 10