Ghostbusters: Afterlife review: an expanded franchise for a new generation

After more than one year of delays, Ghostbusters: AfterlifeFinally, it is headed for theaters. Direct sequel. Ghostbusters 2the film, released 30 years ago. Jason Reitman is its director. He’s the son Ivan Reitman who directed the first Ghostbusters movies. Ahead of the movie’s official release on Nov. 19, Polygon had the chance to see the movie during its special surprise screening at New York Comic Con, and we have some spoiler-free thoughts on the ghostly new movie.

Fair warning, the movie’s premise is explained below, along with content from the first trailer. But we aren’t revealing anything else, and certainly none of the movie’s biggest surprises.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife follows Callie (The Leftovers’ Carrie Coon) and her children Trevor (Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard), and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), as they move from their life in the city to a broken-down farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, which Callie’s estranged father owned and died in. Her father, Egon Spengler who was the Ghostbuster character played by Harold Ramis, turned out to also be her dad. This movie is an emotional tribute to Ramis who was both the writer and star of the original films. He died in 2014.

Egon left a host of gadgets and tools inside the house for Phoebe, Trevor, and long-time Ghostbusting fans. These moments of nostalgia are littered all over the place, and the references are mostly harmless fan service — even if it occasionally feels like the camera lingers too long on a prop or two from the original movie. A tense moment towards the end is one exception. It sends the film crashing over the nostalgia cliff.

Columbia Pictures

Like other long-delayed sequels of late, this one is not delayed. Star Wars: The Force awakens Afterlife By making children the main characters, it avoids all of the most dreadful nostalgia traps. Trevor and Phoebe don’t idolize the Ghostbusters — they’ve barely even heard of them, which leaves the enthusiasm for the fans in the theater, rather forcing it out of the actors on screen.

One of the best parts about Afterlife Its structure and the fact that it is so different from the original. Ghostbusters, even though the movies’ stories share more than a few similarities. There’s no attempt to form a new Ghostbusting team, or to recapture the magic and chemistry of the original stars. Instead, Reitman focuses on building strong characters — something he excelled at in his previous movies, like It’s up in the airAnd Juno — and bringing them into the world of Ghostbusters. This is not a pure reinvention. Afterlife It feels like Ghostbusters movies are expanding the boundaries of what they can do. This movie says a Ghostbusters story can be about kids finding where they fit into the world, just as much as it can be about Bill Murray flirting with Sigourney Weaver after she’s turned into the herald of a Sumerian god.

These kids really are the star of the show. This show is not a funny, one-liners comedy as the previous two films. Ghostbusters: AfterlifeThis movie is more like an Amblin Entertainment movie. It features a lot of teenager adventures, and even a few laughs. You will see kids in trouble and making new friends. Paul Rudd plays Gary Gruberson (a scientist teacher) and shows up to help the children or provide some humor.

Columbia Pictures

The performances by the movie’s young actors are mostly winning, but the two standouts by far are Mckenna Grace’s Phoebe and her first-ever friend, who calls himself Podcast because he hosts one. Logan Kim is a newcomer to the role of Podcast. He is charming and funny, as well as a great scene-stealer. But while Kim provides most of the movie’s best jokes, Grace handles just about everything else. If this movie rests on the shoulders of any one character, it’s Phoebe, who is socially awkward, a little weird, and tremendously smart — exactly what Ghostbusters fans would expect from Egon’s granddaughter.

Grace does a great job in this role. She echoes Ramis but never imitates him. This makes the character unique to her. She even has to match up with Carrie Coon in the movie’s most dramatic scenes and Rudd in its most comedic, and she’s excellent at each. Grace has already been great in a few movies — including playing the younger version of half the blonde actresses in Hollywood over the last few years — but in Ghostbusters: AfterlifeShe may finally have found the star-making role she was looking for.

Columbia Pictures

Despite its focus on young characters, Ghostbusters: AfterlifeIt is filled with inside jokes and references to the movies that inspired the series. There are dozens of tiny moments that will make die-hard Ghostbusters fans cheer — and they certainly cheered at Comic Con. It’s the film’s promise to bring a new generation of Ghostbusters kids into the Ghostbusters universe, which is what makes it so exciting. The movie features Afterlife’s endless string of callbacks, Jason Reitman lovingly pays homage to his father’s series, but the new characters are where Jason’s own intimate and personal style of filmmaking shines through. It seems only right that it should be so. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is at its best when it’s about young characters finding their place in a pop-culture landscape their predecessors built.

Ghostbusters: AfterlifeNovember 19: The debut in theatres