Main cast: Paul Rudd (Gary Grooberson), Carrie Coon (Callie Spengler), Finn Wolfhard (Trevor Spengler), Mckenna Grace (Phoebe Spengler), Kumail Nanjiani (Nadeem Razmaadi), Patton Oswalt (Dr Hubert Wartzki), Celeste O’Connor (Lucky Domingo), Logan Kim (Podcast), Emily Alyn Lind (Melody), James Acaster (Dr Lars Pinfield), Bill Murray (Dr Peter Venkman), Dan Aykroyd (Dr Raymond Stantz), Ernie Hudson (Dr Winston Zeddemore), Annie Potts (Janine Melnitz), and William Atherton (Mayor Walter Peck)
Director: Gil Kenan
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is set about five years after Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and yikes, it’s a complete downgrade from the previous movie in so many ways. A big reason for this is that there are way too many characters standing around looking and confused as the movie wants everything but doesn’t know what to do with anything.
The main story line is that the Ghostbusters are back in business, with the Spengler family plus Gary Grooberson moving to New York City to kick start things with Winston, Ray, and Janine. This pits them against their old nemesis, Mayor Walter Peck, and to avoid drama, they decide to sit out Phoebe, who is underage.
This causes Miss Thang to go all modern independent Hollywood movie kween and stomp around acting all bratty and moody, befriending a ghost called Emily and letting herself generally be exploited by the woo-woo to start very bad things. Oh, don’t worry, Miss Thang doesn’t have to face the music or anything like that, because please, this is present day and female lead characters can do anything and everything they want without having to be held accountable for any consequence of her actions.
Meanwhile, Nadeem Razmaadi inherits some strange orb that, upon much wild goose chase of an investigation involving appearances by Patton Oswalt and what not, turns out to be some prison for a demon bent on using people’s negative emotions to start a new ice age on everyone. The whole thing is basically an assurance for Kumail Nanjiani that he still has a franchise to fall back on after the hilarious failure of Eternals, and somehow everything is linked because, huh, why not, I guess.
This is a weird movie in the sense that they clearly have a bigger budget to play around this time, but the whole thing feels more meandering and even aimless compared to the previous movie. The story feels like a few random plot threads thrown together, and most of the characters like made the previous movie fun, such as Gary and Podcast, are just sort of in here this time with very little to do.
Of course, there are some heavy nostalgic nods to the original two movies, but they feel like token additions to this movie.
Ultimately, the movie feels rather hollow and mechanical, with a discombobulated focus on the annoying Miss Thang acting like she’d actually regressed ten years mentally since the previous movie and having this arc that sees her being a gullible thot that is the cause of a potential world-destroying event only to have her role in the whole thing shrugged off in the end because, you know, females can’t do wrong in present day movies.
To top it off, the so-called powerful demon is vanquished in a most anticlimactic manner that makes the villain in the 2016 reboot look like Thanos.
The sad thing here is that there is a potentially fun and zany story here, but there are just too many characters—11 main characters, really?—and plot threads and not enough effort to make them all work. I’d say it should have had a better script and a trimmer cast, but upon reflection, I think they should have just gone back to the drawing board and redo the whole thing.
