Directed by Gil Kenan. Starring Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Annie Potts, William Atherton, Emily Alyn Lind and Kumail Nanjiani.
Three years after the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife and the Spengler family, mom Callie (Coon) son Trevor (Wolfhard) daughter Pheobe (Grace) along with former high school teacher and Callie’s boyfriend Gary Grooberson (the ever reliable Rudd) have moved to New York where they helped Winston Zeddemore (Hudson) and Ray Stanz (Ackroyd) in reviving the Ghostbusters.
When they catch a ghost in broad daylight after a car chase through the city, Walter Peck (Atherton) who’s now mayor makes it clear he wants to shut them down, but for starters he says Phoebe can’t be a Ghostbuster because she’s too young.
Benched and unable to go on missions Pheobe wanders the streets until she starts playing chess with the ghost of a girl called Melody who died in a fire many years before.
Meanwhile a man named Nadeem (Kumail) visits Ray’s shop and sells him a strange brass orb carved with weird symbols. Eventually they discover the orb is the prison of a demon named Garraka who has the power to freeze anything. When Garraka escapes Ghostbusters old and new will need to team up to fight him.
After the failure of the Ghostbusters reboot in 2016 (which was a mess but nowhere near as bad as it was painted) we got the nostalgia heavy continuation in 2021 (which I enjoyed way more than I expected to) so a follow up to Afterlife was always on the cards. Frozen Empire is a decent enough Ghostbusters film. It’s let down by a bloated cast and a slightly ho-hum final act, but I enjoyed it a lot while I was watching it, I’m just not sure it’s a film I’ll rewatch it a lot.
Afterlife gave us some great new characters, in particular Grace’s Phoebe, who continues to be the face of the new Ghostbusters, but Afterlife also gave us the 1980s’ crew, thankfully with a beefed up role for Hudson who gets even more to do this time. I like the Spengler clan (and I even like Podcast and Lucky) and I obviously have a huge love for Winston, Ray, Venkman and Janine. There’s just too many people in this. Bringing Peck back as the mayor works, but he just isn’t in it enough because there are even more cameos to throw in there. But wait, they’re not done yet, here comes Nadeem and Melody and James Acaster’s Dr Pinfield and Patton Oswalt’s expert in dead languages and oh look it’s the library administrator from the original film, and the librarian ghost and Slimer and….just stop already!
They could, and in fact should, have excised many characters, lose Lucky and maybe even Trevor (which means you can lose Slimer), and we didn’t need Dr Pinfield or Patton Oswalt (good as he is). Of the brand new characters Melody is good, and Lind has great chemistry with Grace, and I genuinely liked Nadeem who’s kinda the new Louis. It is good to see Janine in uniform, and despite only being on screen for about five minutes Murray makes everything better, but if there’s another film they need to trim down the cast. I’d drop the old cast down to at most Winston and Ray, send Trevor and Lucky off to university.
I’d also increase the level of threat. The scene where Garraka’s ice powers freeze the sea and the beach are great, and New York covered in ice is a wonderful visual, but it goes nowhere. You might argue the same about the original, but the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man shows up fairly late in the film and his swathe of destruction is limited to the vicinity of Dana and Louis’ building, meanwhile Garraka appears to freeze the entire of New York.
At the end of the day this is a Ghostbusters film, they do indeed bust some ghosts and bustin’ ghosts has been making me feel good since 1984 and this film made me feel good too, just maybe not quite as good as I’d hoped.
werewolves on the moon 