‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’- Film Review: Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good, But This Sequel Didn’t

Fans of the proton packs, ghosts of all kinds, and everything strange in the neighborhood will have one film they’ve been looking forward to. We got Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a sequel I didn’t know they were making about a year ago and must’ve missed when they announced it. Getting another installment three years after Ghostbusters: Afterlife did pretty well at the box office wasn’t a shocker. But if we’re being honest, we haven’t received a “great” follow-up to the original, have we? And how could it since Ghostbusters, released 40 years ago, was a true staple of the decade, one of the few great movies that blends sci-fi, comedy, and action with near-perfect results?

Since then, not everything has struck a chord with mainstream fans. The sequel is passable enough if inferior. The 2016 reboot outside the Ivan Reitman universe gets unfairly criticized by everyone (I’m the only male who stands up for it and isn’t a sheep). And while Afterlife wasn’t amazing by any means (and received more mixed reviews), it’s almost a respectable legacy sequel at best. With Gil Kenan stepping in to direct this time (while co-writing with Jason Reitman), we could be looking at another fun installment to talk about with that nice touch of nostalgia. Instead, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a forgettable and disappointing time for this fan, quite the opposite of what I experienced prior.

What’s the Story: Moving away from Summerville, Oklahoma, Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon), her boyfriend and former science teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), and her two children Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), move to New York City and stay inside the firehouse where the original Ghostbusters were first established. Taking over the business, they continue capturing the unwarranted spirits, causing chaos for the city, much to the dismay of Major Walter Peck (William Atherton), who wants to shut down the Ghostbusters yet again. Things don’t come out of the ordinary when the containment used to trap the supernatural entries for 40 years needs repairs before severe damage happens. Meanwhile, Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) comes across a mysterious ancient bronze orb a guy named Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani) takes to without knowing what’s inside. It’s an evil force called Garraka, whose release could spell trouble, for it has the power of the Death Chill to freeze the world and the possibility of causing a second Ice Age.

Like any sequel, there’s room for potential based on the trailers, significantly when it could step up in the horror department. How could it not be awesome when the world might face another ice age? But you can sense this latest installment tries to cramp so many things into two hours that it becomes overstuffed when capturing the spirit of what made the franchise a hit. With that gap between this and Afterlife, the reason why this sequel exists is to create one. It made the story not just complicated but made me feel less enthusiastic about everything that wasn’t hitting me when pandering to the nostalgic audience. The first act took forever to grasp the story or who the main ghost antagonist was.

Even more confusing about Kenan and Reitman’s screenplay is that it needs a nice balance between comedy and thrills that’ll work for all ages. The franchise has always been synonymous with being a horror/comedy of sorts, but a lot of the jokes fell flat, and I was probably the only person in the theater not cracking up, aside from a few chuckles. Not even the return of more mini Stay-Puft marshmallows are randomly there, just to be silly. This goes forward in providing more supernatural scares than usual, yet keeping a colder atmosphere makes the tone inconsistent. Even when it delves into the antagonist’s mythology later on, that could’ve been cool if it hadn’t been told to us in a lengthy exposition dump from an underutilized Patton Oswalt.

As for the cast of new and familiar faces, some developments that made us care for a few characters in the last don’t exist here because there are too many of them. You can never go wrong with Rudd, who is almost more restrained as he hopes to become Phoebe’s parental figure. And even when this tries too hard to get those laughs, leave it to Rudd to provide a few of those chuckles since he’s oh-so-charming. Grace continues to show some empathy for Phoebe, who is sidelined on missions to hunt ghosts because she’s a teenager. Without spoiling, she made one decision that was too convenient to the plot, which I won’t understand for her character. Everybody else came off as afterthoughts and are just there from Callie, Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), Podcast (Logan Kim), and especially Trevor, who gave him this gag about being an adult now and abandoned it after the second time when he tries to capture Slimer in the attic.

With the original three surviving Ghostbusters back again, it was nice to see Aykroyd bring some of that energy we haven’t seen from him in years as we see Ray attempting to step back into his old profession he once let go. Seeing him and Ernie Hudson as Winston Zeddemore having more to do than expected was good. What’s most surprising is the lack of Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Vinkman. You can clearly see from his performance that he didn’t want to be there. He probably had about five minutes of screen time, which is more of a cameo than a prominent role that bothers me more. None of the newer characters were interesting to remember either when it’s there, from James Acaster’s Lars or Emily Alyn Lind’s Melody, a 16-year-old ghost Phoebe befriends and possibly hinting of a romance I didn’t care about after its predictable payoff. Nanjiani’s Nadeem has more to do since he connects to the ancient artifact. Still, it’s part of a storyline that didn’t delve further.

Even when it hooks you from the start with the gang in a car case trying to capture a sewer dragon-like ghost in the Echo-1, the rest of the action set pieces and CGI weren’t giving me the sci-fi excitement the other Ghostbusters gave me. Once we eventually get to the frozen empire, the investment is nearly gone when the lead-up took too long to get going. The villain Garraka has a pretty cool design, but nothing about this entity was all that threatening for the old and new Ghostbusters to take on once it’s released. After a while, all I can say is this didn’t try to do anything special, and it’s proof with its anticlimactic ending and not earning its moment of heart like with the ending of the last one. It’s not a bad movie, but it left me wanting more. And honestly, I think it’s about time to leave this franchise behind and focus on something new.

Overall, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire might give fans what they want, but the presence of this sequel is almost nonexistent. This sequel to Afterlife falls short on laughs, scares, and a connection to a few of its characters, causing it to lack a lot of momentum. It stands as the weakest of the movies on a creative level.

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