The original Ghostbusters celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2024, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the fifth instalment in the franchise (ignoring the awful 2016 female version) was a great nostalgic comeback requel, I heard mixed things about this follow-up, written by Afterlife director Jason Reitman, son of original director Ivan Reitman, directed by Gil Kenan (Monster House, Poltergeist). Basically, in New York City, July 1904, firefighters (from the fire station that becomes the Ghostbusters headquarters) answer a call at the Manhattan Adventurers Society, a gentlemen's club. Breaking down the doors they find a room of thirty men frozen to death, while a phonograph is playing strange chants in extinct languages. The only survivor is a woman in a suit of armour holding a mysterious metallic orb. In the present day, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her boyfriend Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), and her children Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) are working as Ghostbusters to capture nasty spirits roaming the streets. They are successful in catching the Hell's Kitchen Sewer Dragon, but due to property damage, they face public backlash and threats from old rival Walter Peck (William Atherton), who was elected Mayor. There is also concern for Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), the former Ghostbuster who funds their operation, as their ecto-containment is dangerously close to capacity. Phoebe is considered legally too young to be part of the team, so Callie suspends her rebellious teenage daughter until she is an adult. One day, setting up a chess board in the park, Phoebe meets and befriends a ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), who died in a fire, along with her family, when she was sixteen. Meanwhile, Raymond 'Ray' Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Podcast (Logan Kim) have been collecting cursed objects at Ray's Occult Books store. A customer named Nadeem Razmaadi (The Big Sick's Kumail Nanjiani) sells Ray the metallic orb, which belonged to his late grandmother. When Ray carries out tests on it, the orb unleashes a psychic charge that damages the wall around the firehouse's ecto-containment unit. The Spenglers and Gary are taken to Winston's privately owned Paranormal Research Center, where their friend Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) is working alongside eccentric British inventor Dr. Lars Pinfield (James Acaster). They have invented a reverse-engineered technology that can extract spiritual energy from supposedly haunted objects; they attempt to use it to extract something from the orb, without success. Trevor, Pinfield and Lucky visit Nadeem and find out he has a brass-lined chamber hidden in his deceased grandmother's home, which contains numerous relics and where the orb was stored. Nadeem is then taken to Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) for a parapsychological evaluation, it is revealed he has latent pyrokinetic powers (the ability to control fire). Melody visits Phoebe at the firehouse, where she takes a special interest in the containment unit. Melody is secretly working for the entity contained in the orb, tasked to be close to Phoebe. Ray, Phoebe and Podcast visit Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Oswalt) at the New York Public Library, where he explains that the orb was built to imprison a demonic god, Garraka. The demonic god sought to conquer their dimension with his telepathic ability to control ghosts and to lower temperatures to absolute zero when feeding upon negative emotions, including fear. After a battle thousands of years ago with four sorcerers, the Firemasters, Garraka was trapped, when they exploited his weaknesses on fire and brass. He was briefly freed later by the Manhattan Adventurers Society in 1904, they were literally scared to death, but Garraka was recaptured by one of the Firemasters' descendants, Nadeem's grandmother. The phonograph cylinder recording of the club's ritual is held in the library archive. A poltergeist, Possessor, tries to steal the cylinder, which Phoebe destroyed during the ensuing chase. Following their disobedience to cease their operations, Peck seizes the firehouse and impounds their original equipment. Following an argument, Phoebe runs away from her family. She takes Melody to the research centre, using the lab's extraction machine to separate her spirit from her body becoming a ghost for two minutes so that she and Melody can physically interact. But Melody reveals that she made a deal to free Garraka from captivity in exchange for passage to the afterlife. By forcing Phoebe to recite the ritual's chant, Garraka escapes and freezes the city. The Ghostbusters realise that Garraka intends to free all ghosts from the containment unit to rebuild his army. The team gathers to defend their headquarters with new gear, while Nadeem puts on his grandmother's brass armour and practises to control his pyrokinesis to help them. When Garraka arrives, he easily overwhelms the Ghostbusters and breaks the containment unit, freeing the captured ghosts. Garraka is vulnerable to Phoebe's reconfigured proton pack which fires a brass-like alloy substance. Melody turns on Garraka for his deception and joins Phoebe and Nadeem to restrain him. Since the unit's ghosts are gone Ray is able to use it to send Garraka to the Afterlife. Melody reconciles with Phoebe before being able to ascend to the afterlife, for helping the Ghostbusters, and she joins her family. New York City thaws, and the citizens praise the Ghostbusters as heroes. Peck threatens to shut the Ghostbusters down again, but they coerce him with the surrounding press into supporting the team and reinstating Phoebe. The Ghostbusters get into the Ecto-1 vehicle and begin pursuing the escaped ghosts, including the Sewer Dragon, Slimer, and the Mini-Pufts. Later, a Stay-Puft Marshmallow brand truck is stolen by a group of Mini-Pufts after its driver is filling at a gas station. Also starring Annie Potts as Janine Melnitz, Shelley Williams as Senior Advisor, Stephen Whitfield as Fire Captain (1904), Chris Tummings as Police Chief, and John Rothman as Library Administrator. Grace is reasonable as the young lead, Rudd repeats his amusing nice guy one-liner role, the other young supporting cast members have annoyingly reduced roles, Ackroyd and Hudson are okay, and Murray is unfortunately unfunny. The only positives I can say are that most of the characters are still likeable, the special effects are pretty good, and hearing Ray Parker Jr's iconic theme song is always fun to hear. The biggest problem with this film is that it tries too much to recall everything familiar that made the original fun and fails miserably, there is no effort to make a sensical script or an entertaining story, it is a predictable, boring, and annoying mess, a disappointing supernatural comedy. Adequate!
Review of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
