Ghost­busters: Afterlife

Back in Jan­u­ary 2019, after it was announced that Jason Reit­man would be try­ing his hand at mak­ing a Ghost­busters film, I wrote a lit­tle let­ter to him, spec­u­lat­ing on what it might look like, and urg­ing a lit­tle inno­va­tion rather than rely­ing on lin­ger­ing good­will and nos­tal­gia val­ue from his father’s orig­i­nal iter­a­tion. If any­thing, I feel I may have been over­ly opti­mistic about the future of the franchise.

Ghost­busters: After­life is a sequel to Ghost­busters and Ghost­busters II (choos­ing to ignore Paul Feig’s 2016 she­boot) set 30 years lat­er, fol­low­ing the death of Egon Spen­gler (Harold Ramis) in rur­al Okla­homa. His estranged daugh­ter Cal­lie (Car­rie Coon) jour­neys to his derelict farm­house to put her father’s affairs in order, accom­pa­nied by her teenage son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and daugh­ter Phoebe (McKen­na Grace).

Upon arrival they dis­cov­er the past Egon hid from them, and with assis­tance from kind­ly sci­ence teacher Chad Groober­son (Paul Rudd) and plucky local kids Pod­cast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor) must embark on a dan­ger­ous mis­sion to Save The World from a malev­o­lent super­nat­ur­al presence.

Jason Reit­man has always stayed firm­ly away from his father’s lega­cy, carv­ing his own path with a series of gen­er­al­ly well-received indie dra­mas despite being dogged by the ques­tion of whether he’d ever make a Ghost­busters movie through­out his career. A desire to make a film for his father and daugh­ter pos­sessed him to answer the call this time around. Unfor­tu­nate­ly his answer is a mis­judged dose of nos­tal­gia over­load, laced with cringe-induc­ing dia­logue and bizarre sex gags that seem out of place in a script cen­tred on a group of young teens.

“Ghost­busters is one of those rare fran­chis­es, where it doesn’t belong to the film­mak­ers any­more,” Reit­man said at a screen­ing. ​“It doesn’t belong to my father. Tech­ni­cal­ly it belongs to Sony, but real­ly it belongs to all of you.” While the sen­ti­ment behind this state­ment is noble, it rep­re­sents a prob­lem that Hol­ly­wood finds itself expe­ri­enc­ing time and time again; how do you mine past suc­cess­es for con­tent with­out mere­ly regur­gi­tat­ing a series of famil­iar images in pur­suit of box office returns? Reit­man doesn’t have any answers; his sequel is packed with Ghost­busters mythol­o­gy to the extent it’s dif­fi­cult to see what could be gleaned from this expe­ri­ence that wouldn’t be improved upon by sim­ply watch­ing the 1984 original.

Beyond a fair­ly unin­spired script about a gener­ic-look­ing demon who wants to destroy the world for some rea­son, there’s a dis­tinct lack of chem­istry between the cast mem­bers, who nev­er quite feel believ­able as a fam­i­ly unit. Their stock tropes (the rebel­lious teenag­er, the nerdy daugh­ter) are grat­ing­ly famil­iar, while the usu­al­ly delight­ful Car­rie Coon is under­used as their scat­ter-brained moth­er. A romance between her and Phoebe’s sci­ence teacher might be charm­ing if it wasn’t swift­ly under­cut by the bizarre deci­sion to make them have sex while pos­sessed by ghosts as part of a bare­ly-explained ancient ritual.

Then, of course, there are the Stay Puft Marsh­mal­lows – a main­stay of the fran­chise, seen through­out this film’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Their appear­ance here is unex­plained; sen­tient marsh­mal­lows roast each oth­er on a bar­be­cue as a visu­al gag, pre­sum­ably to raise a chuck­le from the par­ents in the audi­ence who were kids when the orig­i­nal Ghost­busters came out.

Mirac­u­lous­ly, this isn’t the most baf­fling moment in Ghost­busters: After­life, which comes in Reitman’s deci­sion to use dig­i­tal­ly-manip­u­lat­ed footage of Harold Ramis from his father’s films to tug on the heart­strings. The prac­tice of dig­i­tal­ly res­ur­rect­ing actors for film appear­ances has gained promi­nence in recent years, rais­ing eth­i­cal ques­tions about screen life after death.

Reit­man might have had noble inten­tions in includ­ing Ramis along­side old bud­dies Dan Ack­royd, Bill Mur­ray and Ernie Hud­son (who also reprise their roles from Ghost­busters) but what pur­pose does it serve, beyond con­jur­ing an image from the past to tap into the brain­waves of sen­ti­men­tal adults? It feels like a cyn­i­cal ploy for unearned emo­tion­al res­o­nance, as if Reit­man can’t help but use the past as a crutch.

At least Feig swung for the fences with his 2016 iter­a­tion. Reitman’s sequel is a con­tin­u­a­tion of Hollywood’s grow­ing mon­ey-spin­ner: asset-strip­ping pre­vi­ous Hol­ly­wood hits in lieu of risk­ing any poten­tial loss on new ideas and imag­i­na­tion. It might sell tick­ets, but only because peo­ple recog­nise the name. Any inter­est in artistry is all but dead and gone in the age of the IP blockbuster.