Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Jason Reitman rescues the franchise that his father Ivan Reitman established in the 1980s, with a deadpan, funny and nostalgic homage.
The strangest things: Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace as Phoebe and Logan Kim as Podcast
There’s a new ghostbuster in town and she’s a peach. The town is not much, but it’s the only place that Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace), her mom Callie (Carrie Coon) and older brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) can live following Callie’s eviction for not paying their rent. It’s here in Summerville, Oklahoma, on the old dirt farm owned by Phoebe’s grandfather Egon, that the 12-year-old Phoebe comes into her own – harvesting her passion for chemistry and science. “Why can you never trust an atom?” she asks. “Because they make up everything.” What the Spengler family doesn’t know is that Callie’s father was a ghostbuster and his farm the headquarters for his spectral ops.
The last Ghostbusters (2016) sequel was a disaster. A noble attempt to give the brand a female spin, it failed to sustain any comic momentum or even a flicker of fear. And the comedic talents of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon were swamped by the CGI. With Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the smart move was to bring in Jason Reitman. Not only is he one of the canniest filmmakers working in Hollywood (Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult, Tully), he is the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the original Ghostbusters (1984) and its sequel Ghostbusters II (1989). Here, the younger Reitman has opted for the kind of tone that made the Netflix series Stranger Things such a hit with viewers, by blending strong characterisation with a nostalgia for 1980s’ cinema. Here, the accent is not on the supernatural but on the performances and on the delicious dialogue they have to play with (the Spenglers’ farewell catchphrase is “don’t be yourself”).
And Reitman has cast wisely. Carrie Coon is terrific as the weary, disillusioned, cynical Callie, who will never forgive her father for deserting the family. Paul Rudd as Phoebe’s science teacher is a blast, babysitting his students with old video tapes of horror films while exhibiting a healthy admiration for Phoebe’s prodigious brain power. The star of the show, though, is Mckenna Grace, who is pitch perfect as the bespectacled, androgynous nerd who takes everything in her stride (“over-stimulation calms me”). Recalling Kristen Stewart when she was the same age, Miss Grace is no newcomer (Independence Day: Resurgence, Gifted, I, Tonya, Captain Marvel, Spirit Untamed), but this really proves that she has a huge career ahead of her. And as her geeky, hormonally disordered older brother Trevor, there’s Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things. Interestingly, it was Mike Wheeler who, in the second series, dressed up as the Ghostbuster Peter Venkman, played by Bill Murray in the original film. Who knew then that he was auditioning for a real Ghostbusters movie? It proved to be a prescient act, for a smart reinvention of a beloved franchise. So who they gonna call for the inevitable follow-up? With Afterlife posting surprisingly robust figures on its opening weekend, Jason Reitman should be able to write his own cheque.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Bokeem Woodbine, Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, Celeste O'Connor, Tracy Letts, Dan Aykroyd, Annie Potts, Sigourney Weaver, Bob Gunton, J.K. Simmons, Dusan Rokvic, Stella Aykroyd, and the voices of Josh Gad and Shohreh Aghdashloo.
Dir Jason Reitman, Pro Ivan Reitman, Screenplay Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman, Ph Eric Steelberg, Pro Des François Audouy, Ed Dana E. Glauberman and Nathan Orloff, Music Rob Simonsen, Costumes Danny Glicker, Sound Chris Terhune and Scott Sanders.
Columbia Pictures/Bron Creative/Ghost Corps/The Montecito Picture Company/Right of Way Films-Sony Pictures.
124 mins. USA/Canada. 2021. Rel: 18 November 2021. Cert. 12A .
