Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire | It's Time To Give Up The Ghost

<em>Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire</em> is a sorry spectre-cle, a cold hard cashgrab that points to the future by exhuming the past.

Prahlad+Srihari

Apr 27, 2024

Detail from the poster for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Here we are, with yet another unasked-for blockbuster wannabe costumed in nostalgia regalia. It comes bearing a familiar brand name and could easily be mistaken for a Disney crossover. Let’s not dance around it. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a sorry spectre-cle, a cold hard cashgrab that points to the future by exhuming the past. We live in a world where every studio insists on putting the cart before the horse, despite not having a thoroughbred to push their booty to the finish line. Every franchise is in a race to the bottom with studios cannibalising their vaults to keep up with the competition.

The Ghostbusters reboots phantomime the Marvel model, trading the slime, goofiness and improvised riffs of the 1984 hit for nine-figure maximalism and mythos. Lost in the digital noise is all that made the original a hit in the first place. Frozen Empire drains what little joy hadn’t already leaked out of the franchise with each sequel, reboot, reset, whatever you want to call it. The critical misjudgement that director Gil Kenan and his co-screenwriter Jason Reitman (son of the late Ivan who directed the original) make is in believing the franchise needed more world-building, instead of streamlining the operation for more laughs. Neither does Frozen Empire have you shivering with glee. Nor does it creep it real. The only thing that goes bump in the dark is our hands smacking our head in frustration. At this point, IP agnostics cannot be enticed into buying a ticket for a movie with “Ghostbusters” or “Frozen Empire” in its title unless it’s a horror movie about finding closure after being ghosted or iced.

At any rate, Frozen Empire is a modern franchise entry insofar as it has a beginning, a middle, an ending and a post-credits scene. The movie certainly looks like a Ghostbusters movie insofar as we witness a quartet gearing up in jumpsuits, grabbing on to their proton packs, driving the Ecto-1 with its siren blaring, running into Stay-Puft Marshmallow minions and library ghosts. True to the thrust suggested on the label, the ice is broken with a prologue that takes us back to New York 1904 to introduce a threat who intends to freeze the world into submission. Cut to 2024: the descendants of Egon Spengler answer the call of duty to protect the streets of Big Apple from ghostly infestations.

Three years have passed since 2021’s Afterlife. Egon’s daughter Callie (Carrie Coon), her son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), her daughter Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and her boyfriend/Phoebe’s former science teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) have all moved from Summerville, Oklahoma to the Tribeca firehouse HQ. In the process of capturing a Sewer Dragon, the new Ghostbusters end up causing a ton of property damage, as these things tend to go. With the mayor breathing down their neck and threatening to shut them down for employing a minor, Callie benches Phoebe. Being fifteen, Phoebe doesn’t care about child labour laws. Angry about being side-lined, she finds a new friend in a ghost chess prodigy (Emily Alyn Lind). Meanwhile, an ancient deity makes final preparations to set off a new ice age.

Get ready to watch an executive boardroom’s checklist plotting come to life. Hustle through a quick intro in Hell’s Kitchen. Stop by at the Metropolitan Museum of computer-generated ghosts. Scatter the characters across different locations. Take a detour via Easter Egg Complex. Head to the intersection of Queer-coding and Representation. Keep zapping and trapping when necessary. Give the OG crew an air ticket to join up with the rest of the gang. Check in at Fringe Science Central to pass the proton pack to the next generation. Keep reminding the audience to be moved but don’t tell them by what exactly. Don’t deepen the mystery so much as broaden it.

Such pivots from solid storytelling to fan service, from stars to franchises, are enough to give audiences a case of the deja-boo. The characters are made to chase remnants of the afterlife so often we don’t get to see them as people with lives of their own. To stop an icy apocalypse, the movie gathers together ghostbusters new and old (Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts). It even calls upon two new comedic talents: Kumail Nanjiani plays a slacker happy to pawn his late grandmother’s collection of artifacts for rent money, unaware he comes from a long line of ancient warriors known as Fire Masters; Patton Oswalt drops by in a cameo as a loveable fanboy.

The infusion of new blood cannot compensate for the void where a horror comedy should be. Is a few giggles too much to ask of a movie that features Rudd, Murray, Nanjiani and Oswalt? Murray, in particular, saunters from scene to scene like he’s scouting for whoever will sign his paycheque. To McKenna Grace’s credit, she has consistently impressed in each role, big or small, since her breakout turn in 2017’s Gifted. But to carry a rickety contraption like the Ghostbusters franchise is a crushing load to bear for anyone, never mind a 17-year-old actor.

If Afterlife was a transparently mercenary effort, Frozen Empire is no less. The makers seem to hope audiences will ride into theatres for an unnecessary sequel and accept it with applause out of force of habit. But what kind of returns can a studio expect for a movie that can’t justify its own existence, much less the expansion of its world? The franchise went bust three movies ago, never having made much of a case for its continued existence. Time to give up the ghost. Same as with the entries before it, most viewers won’t even remember Frozen Empire until a thumbnail on Netflix or Prime reminds them. But not both of course. Because you can’t cross the streams.