Film Appreciation - It'll Send a Chill Down Your Spine

Cody Hamman chills out with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire for Film Appreciation.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a film that, like its immediate predecessor Ghostbusters: Afterlife, wins my appreciation first and foremost just for the fact that it exists, despite being a movie that I, for decades, didn’t think would ever exist. Back in 1984, director Ivan Reitman introduced us to the Ghostbusters – Bill Murray as Peter Venkman, Dan Aykroyd as Ray Stantz, Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler, and Ernie Hudson as Winston Zeddemore. A group of guys who make their way around New York City in a repurposed ambulance, responding to reports of paranormal activity, blasting ghosts with proton packs, capturing them for safe keeping in an ecto-containment unit in the basement of their headquarters, an old firehouse. That ‘84 film is one of the best, most entertaining comedies ever made, and also has some great supernatural horror elements. It was followed by Ghostbusters II in 1989, which is an okay-but-troubled sequel... and since that one wasn’t as well received as the first movie and Bill Murray wasn’t interesting in continuing to bust ghosts, it looked like we’d never get a Ghostbusters III. Every now and then, we’d hear rumblings that a new sequel might be possible, but then it would be shot down by Murray’s lack of interest. Eventually, Ramis passed away and Paul Feig directed a reboot with an all-female team of Ghostbusters. That’s a film that gets a lot of hate, but I enjoyed it well enough, despite having issues with it, especially with the questionable ghostbusting methods on display in there. The original Ghostbusters did all have cameos in the movie, but not as their original characters. Then, just when it seemed like the era of the original Ghostbusters was truly over, Ivan Reitman’s son Jason Reitman stepped up and made the impossible happen: he wrote (with Gil Kenan) and directed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a sequel to the first two movies that introduced a new batch of characters while also featuring appearances by Murray, Aykroyd, and Hudson as Venkman, Ray, and Winston – and even showed them busting ghosts again! After more than thirty years, we finally got a new Ghostbusters sequel! And it was a really good movie, even if it caught criticism for recycling ideas and villains from the original film.

Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a hit, so of course this time around we get a sequel that went into production as quickly as possible. Jason Reitman wrote the screenplay for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with Gil Kenan and was planning to direct the film as well – but, sadly, Ivan Reitman passed away soon after the release of Afterlife, and the younger Reitman couldn’t handle returning to the world of Ghostbusters while mourning his dad. So he passed the helm over to Gil Kenan... which was also beneficial in getting Bill Murray to come back again, since Kenan had directed Murray in the 2008 film City of Ember, and Murray had enjoyed working with him.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife had centered on financially-troubled single mother Callie (Carrie Coon), her teenage son Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), and twelve-year-old Phoebe, played by Mckenna Grace. They headed out to the small, middle-of-nowhere town of Summerville, Oklahoma to check out the plot of land and crumbling farmhouse that has been left to Callie by her absent father... and while there, they discovered that Callie’s late father was the ghostbuster Egon Spengler, who had moved to Summerville because it had ties to the supernatural threat from the first movie. By the end of the movie, Callie, Trevor, Phoebe, Trevor’s pal Lucky (Celeste O'Connor), Phoebe’s friend Podcast (Logan Kim), and her teacher Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd) have all had life-changing brushes with the supernatural.

Jump ahead three years and we have the events of Frozen Empire. Callie and Gary are now in a relationship and they, along with Phoebe and Trevor, have moved to New York City together – in fact, they’re living in the old Ghostbusters firehouse, which is now owned by the very wealthy Winston Zeddemore. They’re also working as Ghostbusters now, an endeavor that is funded by Zeddemore. They’re capturing ghosts and putting them in the ecto-containment unit, but not everything is going smoothly. Walter Peck (William Atherton), the EPA inspector who caused the Ghostbusters some major headaches in the first movie, is now the Mayor of NYC, and he still has a vendetta against Ghostbusters. He would like to get them shut down – and after a particularly dangerous and destructive ghost chase through city streets, he does manage to get Phoebe benched. She’s a dedicated Ghostbuster, but she’s told she can’t bust ghosts until she’s 18. A three year wait. 

Another problem: the ecto-containment unit is reaching maximum capacity and threatening to break down. Winston has a back-up plan: in a former aquarium, he has set up not only another ecto-containment unit, but also a paranormal research center that’s run by Dr. Lars Pinfield (James Acaster). For forty years, the Ghostbusters have only been capturing and containing ghosts. Now they’ll be able to study ghosts as well.

While Winston is working on expanding the Ghostbusters brand, Ray and Podcast – who is visiting NYC for the summer, unbeknownst to his parents, who think he’s at space camp – have set up a web show called Repossessed, where people bring in potentially haunted items for Ray to examine. Nadeem Razmaadi (Kumail Nanjiani) is one person who brings in an odd item; a brass orb with Mesopotamian Arabic writing on it. And through a meeting with Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Oswalt), a New York Public Library research librarian, they learn the story of this item stretches back thousands of years and involves a phantom god called Garraka, who aimed to conquer the world with a mixture of fear and freezing temperatures called the Death Chilll. Garraka was defeated back then by a group called the Firemasters... a since Garraka is going to end up escaping from the orb over the course of this story, the Ghostbusters are going to need a new Firemaster to stop him from destroying NYC with the Death Chill.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire tells a pretty cool story – and I didn’t mean to make a pun by calling it cool, but I’ll go along with that being a pun. Taking the characters back to NYC allows for some entertaining callbacks to the original film, like the return of Walter Peck and the fact that the attic of the firehouse is haunted by the iconic ghost known as Slimer. The location also means that Phoebe, Trevor, Callie, and Gary are in regular contact with the original ghostbusters and their former receptionist Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) – who, by the end, has her first opportunity to put on a Ghostbusters uniform.

Callbacks like this mean the new Ghostbusters movies to catch grief for feeding the audience “member berries,” a reference to a South Park episode about “member berries” that were “a fruit that evokes feeling of nostalgia in those who eat them.” Some people have a distaste for member berries – but as a 40-year-old who loves seeing continuations of and references to things from my childhood, I eat these things up. And when it comes to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the member berry elements actually worked for me better than some of the things involving the new characters. Winston’s connection to the current and future Ghostbusters worked for me. Ray still being involved totally makes sense – and since they never captured the ghost seen in the New York Public Library at the beginning of the first movie, I went along with the idea that Ray would cross paths with that ghost again when he goes to the library. Call me a sucker, but I also appreciated the cameo appearance by John Rothman as the library administrator character he played forty years ago. When the Ghostbusters are figuring out that Nadeem is a natural born Firemaster, it made sense that Venkman was the one brought in to evaluate him. When Garraka attacks New York, of course the classic Ghostbusters would report to the firehouse to help out the new crew. I’m not sure we still needed miniature Stay Puft marshmallow men around, but yes, Slimer definitely should be haunting the firehouse.

But the idea that Afterlife character Lucky would be in New York because she’s working as an intern that Winston’s research center, a place the new Ghostbusters didn’t even know about? That Lucky would know about this place well before the Ghostbusters find out about it? That was harder to swallow than any of the ‘80s member berries. 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife was something different from the first movie, something more down-to-earth – and at times it even felt Spielbergian. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is closer to the tone and style of the first two movies, while still retaining some of that Afterlife vibe. In the midst of the comedy and the ghost action, there’s also some nice character work, with Gary figuring out what his place is within the lives of Phoebe and Trevor (Nice teacher? Mom’s boyfriend? Stepfather?) and Phoebe coming to accept him as a father figure – while feeling sorry for herself that she can’t be a Ghostbuster just yet. While in her downbeat mood, Phoebe strikes up a friendship with a teen girl ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind)... a friendship that also reads as a queer love story for some viewers. Being friends with a ghost does cause some trouble for Phoebe, but it works out in the long run.

Nothing will ever be able to touch the greatness of the first Ghostbusters movie for me. Ghostbusters II couldn’t even do that just five years later. But I really like what Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan have done with Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and I enjoy getting to see the original Ghostbusters mingle with new Ghostbusters. This is something I didn’t think would happen, and I’m happy that it has.