We just watched Ghostbusters: Afterlife and enjoyed it. It was a sweet movie. I wonder how it hit younger generations who didn’t grow up with Ghostbusters, though? It was banking on nostalgia pretty hard. I feel like a lot of the emotional beats in this story are only really going to land with those of us who grew up on the original.
Also, I feel like the actual plot didn’t get to breathe very much, and that was at least partly because the movie gave so much room to the nostalgia. It was a cool plot, echoing back to the original, made a reasonable amount of sense, but it could have used a little more fleshing out. Like, what was the point of Shandor, other than a jump scare? And our heroes didn’t get to pick a Destructor this time? Why?
The movie was pretty clear about following the original formula, so it seems weird that it veered off-track a bit there without explaining it.
At any rate, it was a pretty decent movie. Funny, and I loved the new characters, particularly Phoebe. Podcast was a hoot, too. Finn Wolfhard and Paul Rudd were a bit wasted, but they did their best with what they got. It was great to see the old cast show up for a minute, and hearing Ecto’s siren again was wonderful.
Overall: Fun movie, definitely worth watching. It leaned hard on nostalgia for the first Ghostbusters, but executed it in a way that came off as sweet, like a love letter to the original, and that was fine.
Notes & Thoughts 