Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) Dir: Gil Kenan

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For such an iconic film franchise, 'Ghostbusters' has produced some pretty mediocre films, with the exception of the original, of course. This 2024 sequel, the most recent entry into the franchise, was directed by Gil Kenan, and did not receive particularly positive reviews upon release, which, I must admit, disappointed me quite a bit after the relatively enjoyable 'Afterlife', which preceeded it.

The original films were built off fun and goofy practical effects, which people loved, but this film, much like its direct predecessor, was riddled with fairly average CGI - a damn shame, in my opinion. The humanoid ghosts were particularly poor - making them glow blue in post not only felt lazy, but looked absolutely appalling too. In fact, pretty much everything in the film did - it was all very ugly.

The screenplay was a bloated mess, and leant heavily on the weak nostalgia produced by rolling out the old stars one more time, and shoehorning them into a story they didn't need to be in. To that end, there were far too many characters, new and old, and nothing close to enough story to justify their presence. Something else that really bothered me was the severe queerbaiting that took place. I like a little 'will they, won't they' as much as the next person, but there has to be some sort of resolution to that, and there was none.

McKenna Grace's performance was one of the few positive aspects of this film. She has been proving steadily in the last couple of years that she has some serious talent to play with, and although this wasn't the best that I've seen from her, she still out-acted literally every other actor in this film by some distance. It really wasn't very close. She is one of the only reasons I'd watch another of these films.

Paul Rudd's comedy may have been pretty solid - you kind of know what you're gonna get, in that regard - I wasn't so keen on his more dramatic acting, not that there was a tonne of that, due to how goofy the film was. Carrie Coon faired slightly better on the dramatic front, but wasn't at all funny, unfortunately, which was a disappointing step down from her prior appearance in the franchise.

Finn Wolfhard became almost non-existent for most of this film, only really having the odd scene, and even then, mostly to deliver some very mildly funny joke. Emily Alyn Lind might have benefitted from not being horribly coloured blue for the entirety of the film, which not only looked bad, but distracted heavily. Her performance was hampered by dodgy writing too, albeit I still think Lind could have done a little better.

The old guard were brought back for comedic relief and to play the nostalgia card for the audience but I was not personally impressed. Sure, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray are funny, but they didn't need to be there at all. Neither did Ernie Hudson's character, albeit he was at least dramatically interesting. There was also the very random featuring of James Acaster, who, albeit funny, never felt like he either needed or wanted to be there.

Overall, I thought this was an extremely tepid, lazy, and evidently money-grabbing kick of the dead horse that is the 'Ghostbusters' franchise. We need to replace the term 'crowd-pleasing' with 'studio-pleasing' sometimes, and this is one of those times. I don't think anyone except maybe the most diehard rose-tinted glasses-wearing fans wanted this, and I feel that even they would struggle to justify this legacy sequel's existence.