In a vacuum, Ghostbusters: Afterlife is breezy action-dramedy with a solid, emotional through-line about family, legacy, and growing up. It has entertaining action, impressive special effects, and likeable characters—but it can’t help falling into the same nostalgic traps plaguing so many franchise revivals: opting for recycled ideas over a fresh direction.
Set in the same continuity as the 1984 and 1989 Ghostbusters duology, Afterlife follows Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), the estranged daughter of Ghostbuster Egon Spengler (previously portrayed by the late Harold Ramis), and her two teenaged kids (McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard). The trio move to middle America after inheriting Egon’s run-down farm and property. Something strange, if you will, starts happening around the small town, and the teens discover their Spengler legacy and set out to bust some ghosts. As family entertainment, it hits many of the right chords. The timeless coming-of-age narrative is surprisingly fun and engaging, particularly Grace as Phoebe Spengler, and the exploration of Callie’s simmering issues with her estranged father are on-the-nose but still feel genuine. The father/child dynamic is made more compelling, as Afterlife is directed and co-written by Jason Reitman (Juno, Tully), son of Ivan Reitman, the director of the two initial Ghostbusters films. Reitman the younger has spoken at length about using this film as a way to process his sometimes-strained relationship with his father, which adds surprising dramatic depth to the story. Reitman has also assembled a good-looking movie. The extended busting sequences are lively and fun, and make smart use of the rural setting. Reitman injects a lot of his indie-dramedy sensibilities into the framing and pacing, and keeps the film visually-engaging.
With the context of Reitman’s relationship to this franchise, it’s unsurprising that Afterlife so openly embraces nostalgia. The reverence to those earlier films wounds Afterlife, but doesn’t kill it entirely. It’s unfair to compare this to the 1984 Ghostbusters, but Afterlife uses that connection as a crutch, going to great lengths to tie itself in every way to that film. The best legacy sequels nod to the past and then forge ahead (Creed, Blade Runner 2049), but Afterlife seems unwilling to let go of the past. We’ve seen this before with so many belated sequels; similar to the structure of Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Jurassic World, Afterlife‘s over-reliance on familiar plot beats of the beloved classics feels less like a thoughtful homage and more like an uninspired retread.
I’ve been fascinated and confused with the general sentimentality towards original recipe Ghostbusters. When Paul Feig rebooted the franchise in 2016 with an all-female Ghostbusting team, it broke peoples’ minds, who felt this gender-flipped revival was somehow violating a precious mythology. The irony is that the 2016 attempt, in spite of its many flaws, was spiritually more in line with Ghostbusters ‘84 than Afterlife: a group of SNL alums with a high-concept gimmick, cracking jokes. Afterlife mistakenly treats that first film like a sacred text, as if Ghostbusters was more than a subversive, winking, improvisational, Murray/Ramis comedy. (Although, props to Paul Rudd, Afterlife’s true MVP, who seems to be the most in-tune with the 1984 original’s comedic wavelength.)
I do think Reitman and company’s attempts with Afterlife are a sincere love letter to Ghostbusters. Despite the abundance of fan service or Easter eggs, it never totally feel like a cynical cash grab—but that over-sincerity may be the biggest problem with this sombre, dramatic approach to a Ghostbusters sequel. It feels weird to accuse Jason Reitman of misunderstanding what was special about his father’s movie, but considering Ivan Reitman’s own Ghostbusters II had all the right ingredients and failed to recapture the magic, it might be that Ghostbusters should have remained a brilliant, one-off comedy. I sound like a curmudgeon because there is genuinely a lot of fun and charm to Ghostbusters: Afterlife! And this is by no means the first franchise revival to lean heavily into over-sentimentalizing the past, and won’t be the last, but of all the flicks to get that treatment…Ghostbusters?
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is playing in theaters. It runs 124 minutes and is rated PG-13 for supernatural action and some suggestive references.
