Chills down your spine, your heart fills with fright…
That’s a hell of a way to start a mood, right? For the past few months we’ve watched the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire trailers where we have seen moments that look absolutely terrifying, but, do they deliver?
Ghostbusters starts off with an ominous scene from 1904 in a very familiar location followed by a Robert Frost poem, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect just based on the poem alone…the scene then shifts to the iconic New York City landscape where we see the latest team whipping through the city in Ecto-1, a quick reunion with the Spengler’s (+1) quickly turns to action as we see a ghostly sewer dragon emerge, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) begins to show some of the teenage angst one would expect from a 15 year old who will we see is “too young” to do much in the eyes of many, and in her eyes she just recently saved the whole ass world. Hard to argue, mere seconds into discussion with her mother, Callie (Carrie Coon) about not using the jump seat, we see Phoebe engage the seat and turn the proton stream onto the sewer beast. It’s an amazing start to the film, and of course this leads inevitably to a meeting with the Mayor.
We see NYC Resident Asshole Walter Peck (William Atherton)has ascended from the lower levels of the EPA and is now the full fledged mayor. He still hates the Ghostbusters (spoiler alert). We see Spengler +1 Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) try to make his case, as Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) just reminds the room he’s 18 and a full fledged adult. Phoebe gets effectively grounded thanks to old Dickless Peck.
As everyone starts trying to figure out how to deal with the new headache of the mayor, Phoebe wanders out in the night and makes friends with a ghost named Melody. It’s a unique addition to the film, and unique is about all I can honestly say. We learn bits and pieces about Melody, and we learn she lost her family in a fire (and her body glows with a blue flame) and she’s waiting to crossover because she has unfinished business.
In all the chaos we also discover the containment unit is having a bit of a Y2K issue…big trap is about full, and well, it isn’t looking good and they need a few more terabytes of ghost space. Luckily, Winston who has turned into the Ghostbusters universe of a Nick Fury/Bruce Wayne figure and he has been working on a whole new facility for the Ghostbusters.
This new facility is hugely important because Ray (Dan Akroyd) has just bought a terrifying relic from a random person who came into his shop by the name of Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani). During testing and through some unique interactions between Phoebe and her ghost friend Melody, a BIG problem is unleashed.
Ice, freezing, the last thing you see is your tear ducts freezing. It’s a bad day and the bad guy is not happy. What’s the best way to combat ice? Fire, right? Turns out Nadeem has a bit of a dormant history with Fire as we learned during an fun seen where Venkman (Bill Murray) evaluates him in a scene reminiscent of the first film, during this evaluation/interrogation we see that Nadeem may hold a massive key to defeating this imminent frozen disaster.
All of our team is assembled for a final battle. one liners zing, Janine is suited up, Phoebe has modified her pack, and the battle for human kind is on again.
The film wraps up rather quickly in my opinion, the final battle just seemed to lack that finale feel. While the film is a fun ride, it’s very predictable and at times the story felt a bit lazy. The Real Ghostbusters vibes went a long way to help with the ride, and the glimpses of other ghosts was fun as well (Shouts to Slimer, again!) but there were just a few things that felt like they could have done a lot better.
Ultimately it’s a fun ride, but, it does little for the franchise as a whole other than seem to possibly open the doors to further expanded universes outside of film.
It’s a great afternoon fun ride, but, it felt like they tried to do a little too much in parts and sacrificed a more linear story and seemed to dumb down the intelligence of the audience at times (I.e. Phoebe/Melody’s whole side story). It wasn’t predictable throughout as much as foreshadowed, they heavily foreshadowed things, even with the poem in the beginning so that detracts a few times.
I’ll still give the Spengler’s another shot, but, I feel like the Phoebe/Melody arc really sidetracked a lot of this one for me as a viewer, usually bustin’ makes me feel good, but I just felt okay as the credits rolled.