The caretakers of the Ghostbusters series are no strangers to being yelled at about all the things that fans don’t want to see in the movies. No, we can’t let women be Ghostbusters. No, this is no place to be earnestly sentimental about dead fathers and original cast members. No, don’t soften things down for younger generations that love the series.
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire feels so wracked with anxiety, seemingly afraid to do anything too extreme with the toys at its disposal. That’s especially unfortunate given that all the right elements are in play. Freed from Ghostbusters: Afterlife’s legacy-sequel trappings, Frozen Empire initially gets down to the welcome business of positing what a fully functioning ghostbusting business in 2024 might look like.
Gil Kenan’s film finds the Spengler clan—Callie (Carrie Coon), Phoebe (McKenna Grace), and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard)—and potential stepdad Gary (Paul Rudd) moving into the old Ghostbusters firehouse, trapping ghosts as a family. The now absurdly rich Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) has been secretly building them some backup in the form of a paranormal R&D facility built into an abandoned aquarium, while Ray Stanz’s (Dan Aykroyd) occult shop has become a sort of supernatural pawn shop for New Yorkers to bring their haunted objects in for appraisal, with the dangerous items sent right over to Winston.
The plot kicks into high gear when a nerdy street hustler, Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani), walks into Ray’s shop and pawns off a family heirloom: a metal orb that, as it turns out, is the ancient prison of an Indus Valley god of death, who appears to be talking directly to the ghosts of New York to negotiate his release. The particulars of this plotline are creepy, with Patton Oswalt’s expository scenes as a curator of obscurities at the New York Public Library feeling like they could’ve been ripped from an Evil Dead movie, and the spectacularly scary design for the death god feeling even more so. At its best, this all coalesces into a film that feels like a live-action episode of the aged-better-than-you’d-think Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the late ’80s.
The problems arise whenever Frozen Empire has to actually advance those ideas. Faced with having to follow the best ones anywhere remotely interesting, the film too often seems to completely lose its nerve, with a script so quick to pivot away from moments of human drama, legitimate horror, edgy humor, or cartoonish fantasy. It seems unsure what master it needs to serve between kids, adults, or über-fans of any age looking for their fix of nostalgia.
The idea of having the embodiment of death itself unleashed on New York City sounds enthralling on paper, but the best the film can conjure to sell the threat is turning the Big Apple into a winter wonderland. Never do we get a real sense that one of the biggest, most populous cities in the world is in all that much danger outside of the Ghostbusters firehouse.
Aykroyd and Hudson have always been ride-or-die for the Ghostbusters series, and they really lean into several excellent, actorly moments of melancholy, wonder, and pathos. But the film seems utterly clueless of what to do with the rest of the adults beyond having them just show up.
That, though, is nothing compared to how Frozen Empire squanders Grace’s Phoebe, the wonderfully neurodiverse MVP of Afterlife. After a mishap involving a spectral dragon in a sewer goes wrong—albeit in the film’s best action beat—Phoebe is sidelined. She winds up striking up a friendship a ghost named Melody (Emily Alyn Lind), and their extended conversations about death, dying, and family are Frozen Empire’s highlights. But, then, the film almost obligatorily has them both make extremely stupid decisions for the sake of the plot that neutralizes the poignancy of their relationship before it can even take root.
There are protracted moments of humor, fright, and pathos in Frozen Empire, but as it’s all so scattershot and disconnected, the film ends up being defined by its lack of conviction when it comes to exploring its ideas to the fullest. The climax features nearly a dozen main characters we know and love, and Frozen Empire can’t seem to figure out what to do with them aside from having them stand around the firehouse, literally and figuratively frozen in place. And considering that one of them is Bill Murray, that makes the film feel nothing short of cursed.
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