Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
SONY
After the middling Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which started great by introducing a newer, more charming Ghostbusting team than the quartet of Drs. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) only to fizzle out by its key-jangling of a climax, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is here. The challenge of making a Ghostbusters movie seems enormous, as the filmmakers have to constantly please fans of the late Ivan Reitman’s original while also modernizing the story to fit in the times society lives in.
Paul Feig attempted to do this in 2016 but failed miserably, so Sony returned to the drawing board and offered a crowd-pleasing legacy sequel to satisfy as many audience members as possible. While director Jason Reitman did an incredible job setting the mood and introducing the extended Spengler family of Phoebe (Mckenna Grace in the best performance of her career so far), Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and Callie (Carrie Coon), the third act completely fizzled out as soon as it started to re-tread the climax of his father’s Ghostbusters.
Key jangling is inevitable in legacy sequels and will continue to be integral to any film that pits old and new stars together. The central question that any filmmaker must ask themselves once they are tasked with helming such a movie is how can the key jangling not feel egregious? How can the filmmaker embrace the legacy and timelessness of its original source material to reintroduce the franchise to an eager audience? A CGI Harold Ramis is not it, as good as its intentions were, especially regarding Bill Murray’s personal grievances with the late filmmaker/actor, which stained his friendship with him for decades until they reconciled before his passing.
In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, director Gil Kenan (who co-wrote the film with Reitman) fundamentally understands that the only way to make the key jangling feel integral to the plot is to make a movie that would be as close to The Real Ghostbusters as possible. The film isn’t necessarily concerned with tying up loose ends and giving legacy protagonists their ‘one last hurrah,’ but instead acts as a continuation to the animated television series, where self-contained stories were told as audiences followed the Ghostbusters into larger-than-life adventures within New York City.
In that regard, there’s no need to make large moments of key jangling to attract the audience’s attention, even if Kenan can’t resist putting the Librarian ghost inside the New York City Library so the audience points at the screen in recognition as Stantz leaves in terror. The same can be said for Walter Peck (William Atherton), whose sole purpose in this film is to remind people that he once played a character everyone loved to hate.
Of course, the ‘twist’ here is that he’s now the Mayor of New York City, which is incredibly wild that anyone would ever think of voting for that twatwaffle (but then again, America did elect Trump as President), which made it slightly funny. However, Atherton serves zero purpose to the main story besides giving some roadblocks to the Ghostbusters and referencing the original’s iconic portrayal.
But he’s the only actor who seems stuck in the past, while Aykroyd, Murray, Hudson, and Annie Potts as Janine Melnitz have fun rekindling with the past but adapting their characters in modern-day New York. Aykroyd, in particular, has the most fun going on an investigation with Phoebe and Podcast (Logan Kim) as they attempt to uncover the secret of a thingamajig that freezes people to death (it’s not as important as the film believes it is). Everyone must know that an orb has been protecting a malevolent spirit inside for centuries, but once it is out of protection, it starts to wreak havoc in New York and could potentially freeze the city to death if the spirit is freed.
Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani) sold the orb to Stantz, which has readings the likes he’s never seen before. Strange occurrences begin to happen in New York, and it’s where they go to the Library to uncover its secrets. The rest of the film is told in fragments, with multiple subplots occurring at once: Phoebe befriending a ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind) who has a hidden agenda with the orb’s spirit, Ray and Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Oswalt) attempting to decipher the language of the orb, and Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd)’s personal challenges as he attempts to connect with his newfound family.
Most of it is highly entertaining, but it’s a definite product of the writer’s strike: a completed but underwritten script was turned out and no changes could be made during production. Not their fault, of course, but the finished product suffers as a result. Everything involving Lucky Domingo (Celeste O’Connor) and her partner, Lars Pinfield (James Acaster), feels like they belong in a completely different film, where Winston introduces the latest iteration of the Ghostbusters to new proton packs and gadgets that will aid them in movies beyond this one. The same can be said for Phoebe and Melody’s arc, which takes a surprisingly darker tone that doesn’t fit the light-hearted nature of each Ghostbusters installment. That doesn’t mean that a Ghostbusters film can’t be a bit brooding, but there’s a certain tone to adopt that Reitman and Paul Feig understood, which Kenan, unfortunately, doesn’t.
But Kenan succeeds in far more ways than Reitman in making each creature shine and translating scenes that could’ve otherwise felt like large chunks of exposition into visually exciting, memorable moments of pure creativity. Consider the sequence in which Dr. Wartzki explains the origins of the orb to Ray, Phoebe, and Podcast. It could’ve been a simple ‘exposition dump,’ in which the doctor tells the story, and the other protagonists react. However, Kenan and cinematographer Eric Steelberg illustrate Dr. Wartzki’s story through a highly imaginative stop-motion flashback, which harkens back to his feature directorial debut, Monster House, already setting him apart as a filmmaker who loves to play. He continues his exploration through the world of the supernatural in Frozen Empire with a real eye for wonder, especially in how he captures the film’s titular ghosts – with a sense of fascination and discovery, exactly the way kids would be curious to investigate further if they see something strange in front of them.
One of the better additions to Ghostbusters' supernatural side is the Possessor, a snitch-like creature that can possess any object by simply entering it. It feels exactly like something audiences would see in The Real Ghostbusters, where the odd bunch of ghosts are the most interesting compared to the comedic Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Men. When the Possessor escapes the facility, the action is continuously fast-paced and embraces the quirkiness of The Real Ghostbusters that potentially no filmmaker could’ve ever translated. Kenan loves the quirky, so naturally, Frozen Empire works best when it leans into it hard, unlike the darker mediations with Phoebe.
While Mckenna Grace’s initial turn as Phoebe Spengler is the best part of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, her arc is severely underdeveloped and takes a much darker turn that unfortunately detriments her character development within the franchise. Still, Grace makes the most out of her limited performance, particularly during a scene in which she becomes a ghost and accidentally gets possessed by the spirit of Garaka, the ghost in the Orb. It’s where Steelberg and Kenan have the most fun in shot composition, where the lab gets completely dark, only lit by Phoebe and Garaka’s blue spirits. There’s a real sense of dread here that unfortunately doesn’t get transposed well enough during its climax, where a…*checks note*...beam comes out of the sky as New York begins to freeze to death. Wasn’t that thrown in the bin in 2012?
It also doesn’t help that the entirety of the final battle is set inside the Ghostbusters HQ, in a confined space, where everyone feels like they’ve shot their moments separately. There’s no sense of chemistry or cohesion within the film’s sole extensive action setpiece, despite Nanjiani (and even Murray, who seems to have fun donning the Venkman suit) doing some of his best work here. The villain seems imposing, but once his weakness is found, the battle isn’t as interesting as Kenan believes it is. This was likely the sequence hampered the most by the WGA strike, as most of the actors don’t talk or say meaningless drivel as they attempt to defeat Garaka and…close the portal before New York freezes to death. Oh boy.
It’s even more insane that, after a scene like this, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire wraps up nicely with a lovingly felt tribute to director Ivan Reitman, who helped bring this franchise to life through the penmanship of Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis’ screenplay. Perhaps this installment wasn’t truly needed, but it may be the closest audiences will get to a ‘Ghostbusters III’ – set in New York, with the original cast members having the opportunity to bust ghosts in a setting that doesn’t weaponize the first film’s nostalgia, but celebrates it. Now, how does Rick Moranis return for the next one?