Ghostbusters old and new team up to take down a chilly new supernatural threat in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, opening in Prague cinemas this weekend. This is a significantly better film than 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and more evocative of the original 1984 film without resorting to gormless nostalgia-bait, but still less than fully satisfying and unlikely to garner enough enthusiasm to secure the future of this franchise.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire relocates its action from rural Oklahoma to New York City, to considerable effect: just by taking place in the same city as the original film, it instantly feels a lot more like the earlier movies than its immediate predecessor.
And wouldja look at that: there’s the old Ghostbusters firehouse headquarters, still standing in Manhattan after 40 years, where the new ghost-busting Spengler family of mom Callie (Carrie Coon), kids Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), and mom’s beau Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) now operate from, helping keep New York City ghoul-free.
And what’s that up in the attic under the pile of garbage? Why, it’s Slimer! And there’s our old dickless pal and now Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton), still giving the Ghostbusters grief despite multiple well-documented supernatural attacks on his city. Here, he blasts them for child welfare violations, forcing teenage Phoebe out of the ghost-busting action.
The old crew are also back here, and this time they’re actually given a little piece of the narrative. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) runs a paranormal antique shop where an especially dangerous item has just come in, and Winston (Ernie Hudson) now runs a well-funded supernatural investigation agency. And Venkman (Bill Murray) and Janine (Annie Potts) are around here somewhere, too, though Sigourney Weaver‘s Dana is strangely absent despite a late cameo in Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Lucky Domingo (Celeste O’Connor) and Podcast (Logan Kim) have also made the journey from Oklahoma to appear in this film, and then there’s Dr. Lars Pinfield (James Acaster), a scientist working with Winston, Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Oswalt), a museum curator aiding Ray, Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani), who discovers his own ghost-busting legacy, and Melody (a charming Emily Alyn Lind) a ghost-girl who strikes up a friendship with Phoebe.
There are no less than 14 protagonists stuffed into Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire; for reference, that’s more than the number of Marvel superheroes that made it into Avengers: Infinity War. Every one of them has their own thinly-sketched subplot, but even Grace’s Phoebe, who gets the most screen time, struggles to find a coherent character arc (the emotion is right, but the logic isn’t).
These 14 characters — maybe 15, if you count Slimer — line up to take on ice-cold baddie Garraka at the climax of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, with each one of them playing their own little part in the finale. Whose Garraka? He’s an adorable mummy-like puppet animated using practical stop-motion effects, and we can only wish that we got to spend more time with him amidst the deluge of protagonists.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire couldn’t possibly be satisfying with all these characters and their own storylines fighting for screentime (Coon and Rudd are particular casualties), but it generally flies by with all these narrative threads pulling us in different directions every few minutes, and maintains an inoffensive, innocuous appeal throughout compared to the tear-jerking sentimentality of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Credit to director Gil Kenan for keeping Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire moving fast enough that we never have time to mentally check out, but his screenplay (co-written with Afterlife director Jason Reitman) really could have used some focus. The ambivalent reception to Frozen Empire puts the future of Ghostbusters in doubt, but fun performances from Rudd, Acaster, and especially Nanjiani give some hope for a potential sequel.
