Nostalgia
Completely ignoring the 2016 all-female “Ghostbusters” reboot, the latest installment hammers on the nostalgia key and, having much in common with “The Goonies” (1985) and “Stand by Me” (1986), does a decent job of that.
How do you automatically ramp up nostalgia in an American pop-culture movie? Start with Smalltown, USA, add a cornfield, a ‘70s muscle car (or otherwise cool barn-find vehicle under a dusty tarp), a drive-in restaurant with neon signs glowing in the dusk, a greasy-spoon diner, a gas station, and a high school romance featuring a skinny, doesn’t-have-a-snowball’s-chance boy yearning for the local alpha-cutie girl who all the boys dream about. Oh, and a Ferris wheel. All that’s missing here is the Ferris wheel.
Oklahoma!
But first things first: Why are we in Summerville? There’s a financially down-on-their-luck, evicted family looking for a fresh start. Callie Spengler (Carrie Coon) and her two kids, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace)—naturally, being teens—don’t want to be there. As luck would have it, they’ve inherited a big old wreck of a farm, following the death of Callie’s estranged dad (locally known as “the Dirt Farmer”). It ain’t pretty, but beggars can’t be choosers and so they settle in.
Mckenna Grace as Phoebe does a great job as a young science devotee so emotionally detached that her science-devotion, for all intents and purposes, functions as a form of faith. When she sees things that would normally scare the dickens out of any other teen, she feels only science-lab curiosity. She also continually cracks corny jokes while in deadpan science mode, trying to improve her understanding of humor, which is of course endearing but only because Grace has the precocious comedic chops to pull it off.
Meanwhile, brother Trevor finds a dusty white Cadillac hearse in the barn with a curious logo on it, featuring what looks to be one of Casper the Friendly Ghost’s companions! Trevor also plays the role of the yearning skinny kid who falls hard and embarrassingly for the local cutie-pie (Celeste O’Connor).
Eventually, Trevor and Phoebe figure out via Google that their granddaddy was one of the original Ghostbusters when the spirit world tried to take over Manhattan in the ‘80s. They also figure out how to use all the rusty ghost-busting gear (including the laterally ejecting door-gunner seat on the old “Ecto-1” Caddy-hearse) and then do their predecessors proud when the ghosts show up. Remember ghosts? This is a movie about ghosts.
And it turns out that Summerville, Oklahoma, is ground zero for a new ghost outbreak. It’s got a transworld portal that needs monitoring. Which is why—say it with me now—granddaddy moved there in the first place.
Any Good?
It’s obviously got a kid-friendly focus this time around and leans more toward dramedy than spookiness. Released in the United States in November, it did $120 million at the box office, which is not bad considering the impact of COVID-19. This was, and still is, a beloved franchise; its roots in the American pop-culture universe are strong—on par with the “Back to the Future” franchise—and Reitman the Younger brings back the original Ray Parker Jr. “Ghostbusters” theme song. “Afterlife” is partially a throwback designed for existing fans but also a chance for younger generations to make the “Ghostbusters” world their own.
Like the “Harry Potter” clubs and Quidditch teams that span the globe, there are still “Ghostbusters” fan clubs and diehards who will likely enjoy this new episode and the Easter egg hunt of finding old stuff in new places. There are many fun one-liners, and while the film is sometimes clichéd and relies too much on fan memory, it’s also heartfelt, sincere, and entertaining. In addition to Mckenna Grace, young Logan Kim as Podcast is exceptional with rapid-fire comedic line deliveries.
