‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ Review: Dir. Jason Reitman (2021)

When you stop and think about the most iconic blockbusters of the 1980s, a few titles immediately come to mind. ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and for many, Ghostbusters would also make the cut. Ivan Reitman’s original 1984 comedy has an instantly recognisable logo, an earworm of a theme song, and felt fresh with its cast of SNL funny guys in a special effects blockbuster.

The first film remains a satisfyingly schlubby take on a sci-fi horror concept; a group of four average (albeit science-minded) guys putting a business together and kind of stumbling their way through the proceedings to become heroes of NYC. A cartoon series would run from 1986-1991, reinforcing the lunchbox, kid-friendly merchandising nature of the bustin’ enterprise, and an inevitable –  if by-the-numbers – sequel eventually followed in 1989.

From there, the further adventures of the original Ghostbusters, made up of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson would wallow in development hell from the early 90s right through the 2000s, with suggestions of a new script of the original team passing the baton never quite materialising. 

With the passing of Ramis in 2014, the plans went back to the drawing board, resulting in 2016’s all-female reboot, which was enjoyable enough with a fun cast, but unfairly became the focus of an online culture war, with some worrying gatekeeping behaviour coming from a small but vicious subsection of the online fandom. Now the franchise has taken it back to the original continuity, with Reitman handing the responsibility of conjuring a direct follow up to his son, Jason Reitman. 

A fine director in his own right – Jason’s filmography does not bear much resemblance to his father’s. While Ivan made broad studio comedies, Jason Reitman has been responsible for more grounded comedy dramas with the likes of Juno, Up in the Air and Young Adult.

On the evidence of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the final results of the long-delayed direct sequel to the original series, there is some suggestion as to why getting behind the wheel of Ecto-1 may have been appealing to Reitman Jr. For much of the first act, this doesn’t bear much resemblance to the original Ghostbusters at all, with more of a focus on family drama and a new set of characters (albeit, ones related to an established character).

We follow Carrie Coon as Callie, the estranged daughter of Egon Spangler (Ramis in the original movies), who inherits a farmhouse in the small town of Summerville, Oklahoma, following her father’s death. 

Flat out broke and on the cusp of being evicted, Callie decides to move to the farmhouse with her two children – teenager Trevor (FInn Wolfhard) and socially awkward child genius Phoebe (McKenna Grace) – to see what their grandfather has left behind. Soon enough, spooky goings-on in the town leads the young Phoebe to discover the Ghostbusting history of her grandfather, as well as what compelled him to abandon his family and come to Summerville in the first place.

There’s a telling line early on in the film that comes close to summing up what Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan are going for with Afterlife. As Annie Potts’ Janine hands the farmhouse keys to Callie, as well as the message that Egon also left behind a lot of debt, Callie despairingly asks if what her father left her is worthless. Janine responds, ‘well, there’s the sentimental value.’ It feels like a summation of Reitman’s own trepidation at inheriting his father’s franchise, a self-aware reflection of what is of value here to explore. 

For a time, it looks as though the film has found an interesting way to exhume this near 40-year-old franchise, largely by putting the young Phoebe front and centre as she learns about her heritage and how it reveals more about herself. Grace’s awkward charm channels Ramis in an affectingly sweet way and the film ends up evoking not just the original Ghostbusters, but many adventure fantasy of the ’80s, with its focus on younger characters making it feel more closely hewn to the Amblin movies of the decade like The Goonies, Back to the Future and Gremlins than that of Ghostbusters. The visual effects have a nice throwback nature to them, and Rob Simonsen’s score echoes cues of both Elmer Bernstein’s original ‘84 music, and the adventure stylings of an Alan Silvestri composition.  

It is not long however until the gears change and Afterlife starts to become more of what many may be expecting, and perhaps even dreading, as the inevitable callbacks and references to the original movie start to take over, and the goodwill established in the first act begins to be suffocated by an incessant need to pull you back to 1984. 

The more grounded tone of the first act soon starts to feel at odds with the winking nature that ends up dominating the rest of the film and is ultimately dropped entirely in favour of giving the fans what it is the filmmakers think they want. As more spooky happenings pile up on each other, it becomes a pretty close remix of the original movie, offering very little in the way of surprises and dropping references with the subtlety of a giant marshmallow man terrorising the streets of New York. 

The tug and pull between a desire to be something all its own and be a nostalgia document for fans of the franchise to guffaw over is eventually won out by the self-imposed need to treat the original as if it is a sacred text. It sadly gives in to incessant fan servicing that quickly robs it of its own identity. The final result ends up being a disappointing mishmash of different intentions, which is no more evident than in its cloying final moments which aim for sweet but ends up feeling odd and ghoulish in all the wrong ways. 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes close to crafting something that stands as its own, thanks largely to the endearing performance from McKenna Grace (overall, the cast are solid, injecting laughs and warmth where they can). But what goodwill that first act conjures soon becomes lost in an avalanche of obvious and clumsy callbacks that feels more like a piece of fan-service bingo than anything else, which frankly gives it all the freshness and taste of a 40-year-old Twinkie.