REVIEW: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)

Movie Reviews

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is ‘member-berry-laden bore, a sequel that exists for the sake of milking an IP for all its current rights holders can. It has none of the charm or fun that made Ghostbusters a classic, save for the rare scenes with one of the old characters. It’s too hyperactive to let a scene play out, too confused to know what it’s trying to say, and has too many characters to balance its bare-bones story. Not even Paul Rudd is entertaining this time.

The Spengler family now lives in New York and has revived the Ghostbusters, with Winston Zedmore (Ernie Hudson) funding the operation and Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) acting as a sort of mentor/wacky uncle. When someone sells Ray an ancient artifact brimming with paranormal power, the Ghostbusters once again face an apocalyptic ghost invasion.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a good example of one of the reasons these legacy sequels rarely work: the shift in filmmaking techniques is so pronounced that something that made sense in 1984 doesn’t translate to today’s crop of directors. There’s a pre-title sequence in this movie that is supposed to establish the main villain, and for a while, it’s interesting, but just when it starts to get spooky and ominous, it suddenly ends. Nothing comes of it again outside of a brief mention later, so the entire thing is a waste of time. After the titles, the opening scene is a chase through Manhattan – the one from the trailers where they’re after the big marlin ghost – and the camera constantly switches perspectives, never letting any character do much beyond making a belabored joke that doesn’t land. It’s no different than a lot of the lesser Marvel movies; just throw as much at the audience as you can while constantly cutting to someone else to give the illusion of excitement. It’s antithetical to how Ghostbusters was filmed, where scenes like this took their time and let the characters be themselves rather than have them vamp on open mic night.

Oddly, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire spends much of its time trying to ape the original. There are callbacks a-plenty, with tech and ghosts making comebacks, re-used locations, and even re-created scenes. It comes off as a pale imitation of a much better film, even more so because it doesn’t understand the things that made Ghostbusters so great. Just like the opening scene, the humor is awful, with attempts at one-liners that never land. It’s the same thing these movies have been doing since the old guard hung up their proton packs: they’re trying to recreate Bill Murray’s iconic Peter Venkman, but they do it with virtually every character. Paul Rudd has to be Venkman, Carrie Coon has to be Venkman, Finn Wolfhard has to be Venkman, and even Kumail Nanjiani, who’s not a Ghostbuster (he’s a Louis Tully knock-off) has to be Venkman. It’s exhausting, especially because none of them are good at it. Peter Venkman worked because of Bill Murray, and trying to recreate that is doomed to fail. It’s  also too much detachment for one movie. Venkman was the too-cool-for-school type who pointed out how ridiculous the spooky happenings were, but he was balanced by Egon, who was invested in the science, Ray, who was obsessed with the paranormal, and Winston, who was a working stiff punching a clock. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire doesn’t get that.

Well, maybe it does, but not in any way that’s effective. McKenna Grace’s Phoebe is the most well-rounded character, as she was in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but she’s much less interesting this time. She isn’t as funny because the script doesn’t know how to construct a good joke, so her scenes don’t have much life to them. Worse, Ghostbusters: Fallen Empire can’t decide what her arc is; she’s either an unappreciative kid who needs to learn to listen to her parents or a dismissed genius being kept from doing what she knows is right. And that’s what I mean when I say this movie exists solely to extend the IP; nobody put any thought into giving the central character (which Phoebe very much is) a coherent arc. Other than Phoebe, Paul Rudd almost has an arc, but again, it’s confused and shortchanged for a joke, with the resolution being completely unearned. No one else has one, aside from a ghost, who has the best arc in the film; I’m not joking. That’s partly because Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has more characters than Lord of the Rings. Everyone aside from Phoebe is relegated to a supporting role, and they’re absent for large swaths of the movie. That would be okay if Phoebe’s arc made sense or if the rest were given interesting things to do, but the film becomes a series of scenes where two or three characters stand in front of the camera, do some schtick, and leave. It’s boring, and it wastes time that could’ve been spent developing a few central characters or furthering the plot, which also disappears until its needed.

What about the original characters? They’re a mixed bag. Winston is mostly there to deliver exposition until he’s suddenly called on to act completely out of character for no reason (someone more appropriate is already saying all the things Winston is). Janine is a bit part, and she never has anything fun to do. Venkman is a glorified cameo, although Bill Murray has a couple of genuinely funny lines (which, based on the rest of the script, I assume he ad-libbed). But then, there’s Ray Stantz. Ray is the best part of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and a lot of that is thanks to Dan Aykroyd. Ray is the most hands-on of the original Ghostbusters, and he’s portrayed much better this time than he was in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Ray never lost the spark, the twinkle he gets in his eye when he’s talking about ghosts and other supernatural creepiness, and he dives into the investigation like a kid walking into a haunted house. Whenever he’s gone, you wish he’d come back because he’s got more life in him than the rest of the cast combined.

One other thing Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has going for it is its special effects. They’re much better than they looked in the trailers, with the various specters coming to life in ways we’ve mostly forgotten CGI can do because it usually looks fake and silly now. Slimer looks terrific, as does the marlin they chase through the city, and various others that pop up here and there. The main villain – who is barely present and is never as ominous as Gozer or Vigo the Carpathian – looks off in a few shots, but he’s mostly fine. The ice effects work, too, and it’s believable when characters freeze, or jagged icicles go flying. Similar to Godzilla Minus One, it’s a wonder that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire has a relatively restrained budget because its effects are leagues better than almost anything Marvel does nowadays, or a lot of other blockbusters. It’s a shame they weren’t in service to a better movie.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a dull, poorly filmed and edited waste of talent. The humor almost never lands, the story is an afterthought, the character arcs are either inconsistent or missing altogether (save one for a ghost), and the non-stop references to Ghostbusters are exhausting. Dan Aykroyd, the special effects, and the five cumulative seconds of Billy Murray are the bright spots, but this is one you can safely skip while hoping in vain that they let this franchise go.