(As far as names for precocious Asian screen kids go, it’s not as good as Data but way, way better than Short Round.) A nerdy, socially awkward 12-year-old, she bonds more with her equally dorky teacher than with the other kids - the exception being Podcast (Logan Kim), a fellow misfit who… has a podcast. And Phoebe gets enrolled in summer school, which is run by moonlighting seismologist Gary Grooberson ( Paul Rudd, regrettably wasted). In the meantime, Trevor gets a job at the local retro-1950s burger joint, the better to cozy up to Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), the cute waitress he’s crushing on. She and her two kids, Trevor ( Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), hightail it to the small town in the Sooner State more out of necessity than love, and take over the farmhouse until Mom can figure out how to make ends meet. In between busting ghosts, Spengler managed to father a child, though to hear his estranged, now-grown daughter Callie (Carrie Coon) tell it, he was not much of a dad. It’s everything in between those points - the half-baked movie nestled underneath the tributes and remembrances of past glories, in other words - that becomes the dealbreaker. How much your heartstrings are thrumming during this preamble will determine how willing you are to go with everything that follows, more or less, and you get the sense that Reitman knew where he wanted to start and exactly where he wants this movie to end up. Whatever is happening, it concludes with the character shuffling off this mortal coil.

Never mind that the late, great Ramis died in 2014 ( Afterlife is dedicated to him): He’s chasing something, or being chased, or trying to trap something out in the cornfields of his Oklahoma farmhouse. The busters’ resident brainiac is set up to be the movie’s the emotional linchpin, the bridge between then and now. Spengler, in fact, is the first person we see - or rather, someone sporting Harold Ramis’ signature mile-high hairdo and telltale silhouette. They’re correct on the first part, though they should technically add to that last bit “also anyone who hasn’t committed the minutiae of the original to memory, and people who expect more than Easter egg hunts out of blockbusters.” “It’s made for the fans, not the critics,” some will inevitably cry. A belated follow-up to the first movie and its lackluster 1989 sequel - we don’t care what you say, Twitter, it’s not good - Afterlife plays heavily to those who treat the teachings of Venkman, Stantz, and Spengler as gospel. And while Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan (the 2015 Poltergeist remake) thankfully didn’t give in to the worst aspects of the Toxic Nostalgia Brigade™, it certainly feels like some sort of canon course-correction is being constructed. This is part of the baggage Ghostbusters: Afterlife brings with it. You’ll get your obsessive pop-culture fix without anyone messing with your perpetual-adolescence shrines. So the declaration that this would be one “for the fans,” even while dutifully paying lip service to the Melissa McCarthy/Kristen Wiig version, felt like a dog whistle: Relax, fellas. They were terrified, however, that the presence of estrogen was going to somehow retroactively ruin their childhood. Worse, they began a campaign of harassment against the new movie’s stars, its defenders, and anyone possessing XX-chromosomes who accidentally crossed their path. Fan-bros acted as if this update had personally gone back to every single print of the original and digitally added a vagina to Bill Murray‘s character.

The 2016 movie had become a whiffle ball batted around in the culture wars, with the mere concept of lady Ghostbusters causing collective pearl-clutching among the die-hards. The second half of that statement was loaded, to say the least. “I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans.” “I’ve always thought of myself as the first Ghostbusters fan, when I was a six-year-old visiting the set,” Jason said. director Ivan Reitman, would be co-writing and directing it.

(Still: Kate McKinnon.) Yet now we were learning about another attempt to resuscitate the franchise, this time with an added bonus: Jason Reitman, son of Ghostbusters O.G. That idea was inspired the end result, not so much. I mean, there already had been a new Ghostbusters movie, which tried to channel the classic 1980s blockbuster’s spirit while giving things a fresh spin via an all-female gang of paranormal investigators. There was a new Ghostbusters movie on the way. Way back in the before times of 2019 - pre-pandemic, but after the world was already experiencing real Old Testament-type stuff, like human sacrifice, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria, Trump - readers may have come across a news item.

Movie review ghostbusters afterlife