Ghostbusters - Frozen Empire

Icing With Death

Ghostbusters
Frozen Empire
Directed by Gil Kenan
USA/Canada 2024
Columbia Pictures
UK Theatrical Cut

It’s funny... my personal experience with the Ghostbusters franchise has always been a bit of a hit and miss affair. I got caught up in it back in 1984 starting with the song... I bought the 12 inch version of the single (the first record I bought with sung lyrics on it, I think... I was always a soundtrack kid) and quite liked the movie when I saw it the same year on its first cinema release. I didn’t think it was great but... it was okay and I have a lot of affection for it. Not so the sequel, which I remember being appalling. Then, after a gap of more than a couple of decades, the female led reboot was... pretty well made and well acted but, somehow almost completely unfunny (I thought... save for a few great one liners spoken by Chris Hemsworth).

So when Ghostbusters Afterlife came out, during the pandemic I think, I was not invested in it and even waited a fair few months before seeing it. And it was absolutely great. Pitch perfect. In fact, I think it’s easily my favourite Ghostbusters movie to date. However, I couldn’t see how they’d make a credible sequel to that one and so, when Ghostbusters - Frozen Empire rolled around, although I saw it at the cinema on opening weekend, I really wasnt expecting much from it. Especially after hearing Mark Kermode’s damning review of the film.

So I’m pleased to say that this one wasn’t nearly as much of a mess as I thought it would be and, again, I actually quite enjoyed it, to be honest.

For this one, the clan of Spengler descendants return, now relocated to New York in the old Ghostbusters firehouse. So we have the Spenglers next generation of Ghostbusters played by Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard (the Stranger Things kid) and the always incredible Mckenna Grace as Phoebe Spengler, the one most like her grandad (played by the late Harold Ramis in the first two movies). We also have Paul Rudd back and the original team as presented by Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts... plus a few other faces from the old days. Plus some of the other new characters from the previous film who have united with the old gang to work in a kind of Ghostbusters technical centre (they’re like Q section in the James Bond movies)... and a couple of welcome guest stars in the form of Patton Oswalt and the always reliable Kumail Nanijani.

There’s certainly a lot going on but I never got lost and I think, rather than the mess that some critics are presenting it to be, all the story beats from different strands of the movie are nicely interlocking and make sense by the end of the picture. Even to the point where it telegraphs itself in one early scene... as soon as you see a particularly cool ghost character played by Emily Alyn Lind and she gets out a book of matches which holds a single match, you just know how it’s all going to fit in with the denouement of the movie, especially when Nanijani’s character is more fleshed out from around the mid point of the story.

It’s got some nice action beats and a pretty good score by Dario Marianelli, which also uses one of Elmer Bernstein’s main themes from the first film and, sticks to his orchestration style for a lot of the rest of it, I’m pleased to say. I’m also pleased to say that there looks like there will be a proper CD release of the score in a few weeks and so that will be an instant purchase.

Although the film isn’t quite as emotionally engaging as Afterlife, it comes pretty close and I have to say that I am pleased to see that, even without the CGI resurrected spirit of Harold Ramis (although there’s a nice set up to that happening before the rug is pulled out from both the audience and one of the characters), the sequel does pretty well with what it’s got and, honestly, I would be happy if they just kept on making them now.

A couple of odd things I’ll just mention... not really bad things at all, just odd. One is that one of the new characters both looks like and also seems to be playing his character, as a young, mid-1960s Michael Caine, for some reason. I mean... what? It’s like Harry Palmer joined the Ghostbusters! Not knocking it... it’s fun but, why?

Secondly, there is an obvious lesbian attraction between Phoebe Spengler and one of the main ghost characters in the movie, so much so that she temporarily separates her spirit from her body in order to spend some time with her. But it’s really well played between the two characters and... obviously there but, never once specifically mentioned as even existing... it’s like the film wants to ‘almost but not quite’ highlight it and pull back from it at the same time. I suspect there was a slightly different cut of the movie which maybe got buried for commercial reasons... that would be my guess, anyway.

Thirdly, there’s a big set up about all the old ghosts escaping from their holding chamber and returning and we see a shot of them going past the Statue Of Liberty but, not once does the statue get animated in a ghostly manner as I’m sure it did in one of the past movies. It’s almost like the studio deliberately set it up as a visual echo and then... just dropped it for whatever reason (budgetary restrictions or bad CGI would be my best guesses on that).

Also, the climactic showdown at the end of the movie... seems a little smaller than you would expect after everything that’s come before it, I thought. Although, it still works pretty well and it doesn’t really detract from the movie either, I reckon. So there you go, I quite liked Ghostbusters Frozen Empire and I think its very lucky that the movie didn’t shift tonally too much from the last outing. If you liked the previous movie then you’ll probably like this one too.