2024 | PG-13 | starring Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Dan Akroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Annie Potts | directed by Gil Kenan | 1h 55m | 3 out of 5 stars |
There are surely some movie producers, particularly at Sony, who get high off of nostalgic recognition like a friending coke addict. I don’t know when it started, it could have been as far back as seeing the Xenomorph skeleton in Predator 2 for all I know, but these people once watched a theater audience gasp and cheer at the sight of something they recognized from another movie, loved it, recognized how easy it was to get and have been chasing that high ever since. To a point where the mere sight of a Barbasol canister in Jurassic Park: Dominion or a parade float of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man in Ghostbusters (2016) is supposed to make us leap from our seats and burst into applause. To say these people have overplayed their hand in the last few years, pilfering through every frame, line and prop from every movie from the 80s and 90s and scatter them as Easter eggs in new movies, would be the decade’s biggest understatement.
But I digress. Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire isn’t the worst offender of this (that title still may go to Jurassic Park: Dominion or Ghost Busters: Afterlife, the first of this rebooted series), but it is more noticeable in this movie because this movie in fits and starts is actually pretty good and doesn’t need that stuff. Dominion is going to come up a lot in this review because Frozen Empire is following that movie’s formula. It is an overstuffed mash-up of new legacy characters crammed on screen with the near-miraculous return of the original actors (particularly given how much Bill Murray obviously hates these sequels). The return of Ray (Dan Akroyd), Winston (Ernie Hudson) and Peter (Murray) are not Easter Eggs here, but woven into the new story pretty well in the outset with Winston being the financer of the Spengler family’s new New York ghost-busting franchise and Ray the occult shop owner they take their questionably demonic artifacts too.
The star of the show is still young Phoebe Spangler (Mckenna Grace) who is forced out of Ghostbusting child labor by Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton again) and finding herself bonding with an equally lonely ghost in Central Park, Melody (Emily Alyn Lind). Meanwhile, we learn that Winston has financed a lab that is studying possessed objects, creating bigger and better Ghostbusting weapons and an orb artifact from 100 years ago turns up housing a demonic entity that wants to turn the world into ice. Everyone is given something to do, from Gary Grooberson’s (Paul Rudd) attempts to father his stepchildren to Trevor (Finn Wolfhard)’s attempts to get rid of a pest in the firehouse, Slimer, and the technical issues with the containment unit. Because it wasn’t crowded enough, Afterlife sidekick Podcast (Logan Kim) is here, Kumail Nanjiani shows up as the owner of the orb and becomes a major character and Patton Oswalt plays an exposition-carrying librarian. All qualities that could have been folded into the existing soccer team of characters. While Frozen Empire has all of the predictable problems of these legacy sequels, it feels like it’s checking boxes a lot, that all of this doesn’t collapse on itself or become too convoluted is a minor miracle. Thanks to director Gil Kenan (Monster House) who keeps things moving.
Frozen Empire also excels with a few great set pieces. The ghost chase highlight of Aferlife is blown up and taken to the New York streets in the first few minutes, but even better Kenan does something that no Ghostbuster remake has able to tap into yet – recognizing that these movies play best when taking the horror elements seriously. Frozen Empire feels like an episode of the animated The Real Ghostbusters TV series and Kenan effectively turns the film into a fun, spooky gateway horror movie for young ones with a formidable villain and high stakes.
Ghostbusters was a lightening-in-a-bottle movie that hit a perfect tone in its time and place. The attempts to turn it into a new movie franchise have been embarrassing misfires that grapple with pieces from the original movie but don’t understand the full recipe. From the improv comedy of the 2016 movie to the Stranger Things remake of Afterlife, it’s taken a lot for writer Jason Reitman to steer this ship back on course. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is the best of the bad legacy sequels. While a mess, it at least feels like a film that is in the right hands, the hands of fans to make something for fans. Maybe next time they can throw out the studio notes and stunt casting and turn this into its own unique monster.