‘Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’ is Maybe a Little Too Chill

March 21, 2024

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Ghostbust a Move (CREDIT: Sony Pictures)

Starring: Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Dan Aykroyd, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Alyn Lind, Celeste O’Connor, Patton Oswalt, Logan Kim, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton, James Acaster, Annie Potts, Bill Murray

Director: Gil Kenan

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Paranormal Freakiness

Release Date: March 22, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Ghostbusting generations old and new are back in business again. And not a moment too soon, because New York City is about to be targeted with some apocalyptic shenanigans. When an opportunistic slacker (Kumail Nanjiani) sells a suspicious orb to Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), the captive spirits in the Busters’ firehouse start acting rather fishy. Well, fishier than usual. It turns out that a millennia-old supernatural being named Garraka might just be trying to make a comeback. And if he has to freeze the Big Apple in the middle of summer to pull it off, well, then that’s just what he’s going to do. Meanwhile, Phoebe Spengler (McKenna Grace) is feeling adrift, because she’s still a minor and can’t fully participate in the family business. So she starts hanging out with a seemingly friendly ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), although Melody may just have her own machinations in mind.

What Made an Impression?: What’s Cooler Than Being Cool?: Frozen Empire is in no rush to deliver on its core premise. The icy villain doesn’t show up in full until the final act, so his ultimate defeat isn’t exactly filled with tension. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would have made more sense to invert this approach. That is to say, let New York freezing over be the inciting incident, and then figure out from there how to thaw it out. Instead, director Gil Kenan and co-screenwriter Jason Reitman (who inherited the franchise from his father while directing 2021’s Afterlife) mostly aim for a hangout vibe, with a bunch of random ghosts creating mild chaos while the human characters chit-chat about their favorite paranormal topics.
The Gang’s All Here: One of the major promises of Afterlife was the return of the original Ghostbusters, but that basically just amounted to a glorified cameo. This time around, Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts are all actually fully fledged members of the cast, which somewhat downplays the need to just play the greatest hits. So while Frozen Empire isn’t overly burdened by fanservice (give or take a scene of Paul Rudd earnestly admitting that busting makes him feel good), it’s never fully clear what the context of this world is, vis-a-vis the wider public’s recognition or lack thereof that ghosts exist. They sure seem rather ubiquitous, but there are still authority figures (like William Atherton reprising his role from the original) trying to shut down any busting operation, when it feels like the citizenry ought to be demanding that the Ghostbusters be added to the list of government-provided emergency services.
Who Believes in Ghosts?: If there are more Ghostbusters adventures to come, and I think there just might be, why not take an approach similar to that of the Fast and the Furious series and invite back into the fold everyone who’s ever been in a Ghostbusters movie? Frozen Empire kind of utilizes this approach, but the next chapter could take it even further by re-enlisting the likes of the Lady Ghostbusters. Then just focus on crafting a sufficient new big bad and ignore the fight to win over the hearts and minds of the public. That battle’s surely already been won! Frozen Empire hints towards this maximalist approach, but it’s a little too attached to its underdog roots to really run with it.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is Recommended If You Like: Talking to ghosts, but pretending that you’re too cool to talk to ghosts

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Proton Packs

Getting Caught Up in ‘Madame Web’

February 20, 2024

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The Four Madames (CREDIT: Sony Pictures)

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabel Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Adam Scott, Kerry Bishé, Emma Roberts, Zosia Mamet, Mike Epps, José María Yazpik

Director: S.J. Clarkson

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: February 14, 2024 (Theaters)

It’s finally here!

Madame Web… what an experience. I can barely believe what I just watched, but I’m so grateful I did.

I can see the future now, but only a thin slice of it, specifically the part in which Madame Web becomes a midnight movie classic.

Half of it is run-of-the-mill meh mediocre. But that other half… It’s like the people who made this movie were half-asleep during all of 2003 and tried to recreate that year through telepathy.

The Amazon is a trip, man. They don’t make realities like this anymore!

Grade: Mike Epps and Emma Roberts Are Weirdly Also in This

‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ is Very Similar to the First ‘Ghostbusters,’ and I Would Be Very Surprised If Anyone Argued Differently

November 16, 2021

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife (CREDIT: Screenshot)

Starring: McKenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Logan Kim, Celeste O’Connor, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, Bokeem Woodbine

Director: Jason Reitman

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Shooting Lasers at Those Ghosts

Release Date: November 19, 2021 (Theaters)

Ghostbusters: Afterlife plays all the biggest hits of the original Ghostbusters, but in rural Oklahoma instead of Manhattan. A gluttonous spook chomping away, squishy treats running amok, hellbeasts hooking up, “Who you gonna call?” – it’s all right here! It’s like a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live: perfectly professional, and it probably works best for those who haven’t seen the first edition. As for those who were around for the original, there’s the thrill – or sting – of familiarity. This time around, the main busters are a few precocious kids, as opposed to a crew of childlike adults, so the vibe is at least a little different, although pretty much everyone involved takes great pains to capture that 1984 mojo as best they can.

I frequently wonder why repetition is demonized so much more in cinema than it is in other mediums. Revivals are an essential piece of live theater, musicians are expected to play the same songs over and over at their concerts, superhero comic books thrive on retelling the same stories, etc. But when you trot out a repeat at the movie house, you might draw big crowds, though you likely won’t win much critical praise, at least not as much as you did the first go-round. It probably has something to do with scale and budget. It takes years to assemble sequels and reboots, so there is a lot riding on them to be worth it. Ghostbusters: Afterlife plays it safe, so we’ll probably continue to see proton packs around town for decades to come, but I don’t know if anyone will also start emulating Paul Rudd’s plaid ensembles. (Well, maybe they will, but less because of this movie and more because he’s the Sexiest Man Alive.)

I didn’t want to be preoccupied by all this context while watching Afterlife, but it’s kind of unavoidable when you’re as plugged into culture as much as I am. When I try to think about this movie in and of itself, I can at least say that I appreciate that Carrie Coon and McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard were free to do their own thing, more or less. And there is one scene that I must admit is just undeniably satisfying, and that is when a bunch of Stay Puft marshmallows impishly run amok in a brand name department store. It’s cute and chaotic – an eternally winning combination. It’s also curious and a little unpredictable, which are qualities that the rest of the movie could have definitely benefited from.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is Recommended If You Like: SNL recurring sketches, the Minions going shopping in the first Despicable Me, Dead actors resurrected by technology

Grade: 2.75 out of 5 Spooks

Vince Vaughn and Kathryn Newton Get ‘Freaky,’ and a Bloody Silly Time Will Be Had By All

November 11, 2020

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Freaky (CREDIT: Brian Douglas/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Kathryn Newton, Katie Finneran, Celeste O’Connor, Misha Osherovich, Uriah Shelton, Alan Ruck

Director: Christopher Landon

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: R for Stunningly Over-the-Top Gore and Bluntly Disturbing Profanity

Release Date: November 13, 2020 (Theaters)/December 4, 2020 (On Demand)

When the elevator pitch for a movie is “A serial killer swaps bodies with a teenage girl,” how could its title be anything other than “Freaky Friday the 13th”? Maybe litigiousness was a concern, or perhaps brevity really is the soul of witty knifeplay, as co-writer/director Christopher Landon and company ultimately settled on the shorter moniker Freaky for this breezy and deadly concoction. Landon is best known for mashing up slashers and time loops in Happy Death Day and its sequel, and now he’s got another unlikely complement for his preferred horror subgenre. The hallmarks of the two formulas mix together mostly seamlessly, as mystical mumbo-jumbo and a race to a point-of-no-return countdown are punctuated by buckets of gore.

The teenage girl in question is Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton), who’s been going through life in a bit of a daze ever since her dad died about a year ago, while the serial killer (Vince Vaughn) is known as the Blissfield Butcher, and that’s pretty much all you need to know about him. Freaky‘s slasher approach is most directly inspired by the Friday the 13th franchise, particularly the early sequels in which the be-masked Jason Voorhees’ motivation gradually drifts away from revenge and more towards a general unquenchable thirst for killing. For Newton, that means playing the Butcher in Millie’s body as mostly a silent stalker, while occasionally dropping piercingly vulgar threats of violence. If the Butcher is motivated by anything, it’s shiny objects, as he is positively entranced by a beautiful kitchen knife, while his fashion sense leads him to outfit Millie’s body in a striking blood-red jacket.

Vaughn has a much more effervescent role to play, which he tackles with a level of relish that is always ready to be tapped whenever he’s given the right material. With arms akimbo and his heart on his sleeve, he nails the looseness of someone who suddenly finds herself a foot taller and about one hundred pounds bigger. Millie’s fascination with all the nooks, crannies, and appendages of her new body is infectious and an inspiration for all of us to celebrate the vessels we’re currently living in, body swap or no. Good on Vaughn for being so fully up for anything!

As for the actual story, Freaky lacks the emotional oomph present in the best of the body swap genre (or the best of the slasher genre, certainly). The thematic heft of the body swap tends to be driven by the swappers ultimately coming to an understanding with each other, but that’s not exactly going to work when one of them is basically an embodiment of pure evil. So we must be sated by the goofball charm, of which there is plenty, and the absurd graphic violence, of which there is even more. Landon is clearly here to revel in the most baroque excesses of the slasher world, as the Butcher utilizes the likes of a toilet seat and a tennis racket in profoundly lethal ways. Also there’s apparently a cryogenic chamber in a high school locker room. All that AND there’s a “Que Sera Sera” needledrop. Quite frankly, I think Freaky knows exactly who its audience is.

Freaky is Recommended If You Like: Friday the 13th Parts 3 through 6, Grindhouse-style gore, The continued relevance of Vince Vaughn

Grade: 3 out of 5 Magic Daggers