BEFORE: All right, Happy Halloween, I hope you had a good one. Our doorbell didn't ring once, so I guess all the neighborhood kids had somewhere better to be, because they sure weren't coming to my house for candy. Well, fine, that's more candy for me and my wife, I only bought one bag anyway. I'll show you ungrateful kids, I'll eat ALL the Almond Joys myself AND all the Reese's pumpkins AND all the Butterfingers. See, when you're an adult you can just BUY your favorite candies, you don't have to go door-to-door begging for it. So take that.
I worked an animation event most of the day, but I was home by 8 pm, we just ordered take-out and watched the finale of "Halloween Baking Championship" to celebrate the day. Then came some candy AND the last movie in my October horror chain - it's all been building to this one, really. I sat on the previous "Ghostbusters" film a bit too long, I only watched it last year, two years after it was released, which meant that just six months later, there was another sequel. Had I known I might have saved "Afterlife" for one more year and watched them together, but how was I to know? The important thing is that I didn't wait as long to watch "Frozen Empire" and now I'm all caught up.
I'm also all caught up on the "Purge" movies, the "Scream" movies, and the "Godzilla/Kong" franchise, plus I got to the "Beetlejuice" sequel super on time, and knocked off "The Ring" movies and the "Army of the Dead/Army of Thieves" duology. I only started ONE franchise that I couldn't finish this year, and that was the "X" trilogy, the new sequel "MaXXXine" was left unwatched. Oh well, you can't win 'em all. Same goes for the Sony Spider-Verse, I crossed off "Madame Web" but I couldn't cram in the new "Venom" movie, plus "Kraven the Hunter" comes out in December.
Celeste O'Connor carries over again from "Freaky". And hey, I started the month with a ghost comedy and I'm going to end it with another one, I love the symmetry.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" (Movie #4,572)
THE PLOT: When the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second ice age.
AFTER: The younger Ghostbusters crew, aka Igon Spengler's family, move to New York City and run the new franchise out of the old Tribeca fire station, one of just many nods to the original film from 1984. And there are almost no references to the universally-hated "Ghostbusters 2" sequel, so there's that. They get the old ECTO-1 car back, but upgrade to some new uniforms, new proton packs, and new ways to contain ghosts, because the old containment facility for the ghosts hadn't been emptied in quite some time, so it must have been getting crowded in there. Also, that firehouse was then technically the most haunted building in the world, with 40 years og ghosts inside.
(NITPICK POINT: I don't really like the gunner seat on the car, it just takes too much time to deploy it, spin it around for no reason, and I suspect that once you discuss using the gunner seat, argue over using the gunner seat, deploy the gunner seat, and spin the gunner seat, that ghost is probably gone. And most likely there's not enough room in Manhattan streets to have someone sticking out the side of the car without them smacking into a double-parked truck and getting seriously hurt. I approve of the RC ghost trap and the drone ghost trap, but the gunner seat is just a time-waster.)
But really this is a return to form - the firehouse, the return of the car, appearances by all the old Ghostbusters crew that are still alive, and the guy from the original 1984 film who was the head of the EPA and shut down their containment unit is now the Mayor of NY - which makes perfect sense because we've learned that every NYC mayor is a corrupt asshole, except Bloomberg who was too rich to be corrupt, but still probably an asshole. Mayor Peck wants to shut down the new Ghostbusters more than ever, and he's wanted to do that for 40 years. Be careful what you wish for, though, because you never know when NYC will be attacked by a giant ghost-demon who wants to re-freeze the world. I thought hell was supposed to be hot, but who knows, what if it's cold? I know, there's no hell and no ghosts but let's have a little fun on Halloween and not get all upset about that.
Dr. Ray Stantz is now hosting paranormal YouTube videos, where he tests everyday objects to see if they're haunted. It's a bit like "Antique Roadshow" but for possessed possessions. Wait, no, that's correct. It's also a bit similar to the Lydia Deetz situation in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" where she now hosts a show about visiting haunted houses. Well, even our beloved characters from 1980's movies have to change with the times. (The "Beetlejuice" franchise went longer without a proper sequel, 36 years, whereas there was only 32 years between "Ghostbusters" movies if you don't count the female reboot attempt.). And Winston Zeddemore invested his money wisely, because he's the one funding the new Ghostbusters crew and the new paranormal research facility.
But being a team of first responders in a big city means following the city's guidelines, and so the Mayor is correct, they can't have a 15-year old actively chasing ghosts, she's not old enough. So Phoebe Spengler is sidelined from the team, and is forced to do her homework, but ends up playing chess in a park with a teenage ghost who died in a fire. Meanwhile Dr. Stantz and his new assistant, Podcast (another character introduced in the previous film) actually find an object which gives off psychokinetic or "ghost" energy, and they determine it's a ghost trap from ancient times, and visit an expert at the NY Public Library to learn more about the legends of Mesopotamian culture from 4,000 years ago to try to determine what might be inside this orb.
Meanwhile, other members of the team visit the man who sold Stantz the orb, and they learn that the man's grandmother got the orb from the Firemasters, who worked with an organization called the Manhattan Adventurers' Society, which coincidentally used to gather in the exact same firehouse, and they froze to death after conducting a mock ritual to release the phantom god Garraka from the orb. The Firemasters apparently prevented the creature's escape, but for some reason they let the Adventurers freeze? This kind of doesn't really compute, either they beat the demon ghost or they didn't, which is it? The team enlists Peter Venkman, from the old days, to see if the guy who inherited the orb might have any psychic powers, because if he could control flame like his ancestors, that could come in really handy - you know, just in case a giant phantom god with freezing powers starts taking over the city or omething. You just can't be too careful.
The second half of this movie is kind of the same plot as the last half of the original movie, all the ghosts get let out from the containment field and the Ghostbusters have to hustle to catch them all again. Same deal here, it happens in a different way and there are a few more bells and whistles, but I'm starting to suspect that the Ghostbusters ALLOW the containment field to fail, once in a while anyway, because well, that's job security. If they caught ALL the ghosts, they'd be out of a job. No, better to empty the trap one in a while, stay in business longer, right?
Not for nothing, but maybe we need a new Ice Age - isn't global warming (climate change) a huge problem right now? I mean, sure, the good guys should win and the bad demon/ghost should lose and be trapped forever somewhere else, but maybe? Look, when it gets super hot next summer, like 120 degrees in the shade, you're going to WISH that you let the demon ghost win, I'm just saying. Good luck making it through another sweltering NYC summer without him. Let him turn half the world to ice, maybe, that's bound to make things cooler for the other half. Just saying.
Anyway, making it to Halloween means I'm shutting down the blog for three weeks or so, I'll re-open for Thanksgiving and the push to Christmas - just 14 films left in the year now, and I'll have to make them count. I'll see you back here in about three and a half weeks for the final part of this year's chain.
Also starring Paul Rudd (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Carrie Coon (last seen in "Ghostbusters; Afterlife"), Finn Wolfhard (ditto), Mckenna Grace (ditto), Annie Potts (ditto), Kumail Nanjiani (last heard in "Migration"), Patton Oswalt (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Logan Kim (last heard in "Kung Fu Panda 4"), Emily Alyn Lind (last seen in "Replicas"), James Acaster, Bill Murray (last seen in "Belushi"), Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Ernie Hudson (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), William Atherton (last seen in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge"), Shelley Williams, Chris Tummings, John Rothman (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Stephen Whitfield (last seen in "A Royal Night Out"), Natalie Cousteau, Allison McKay (last seen in "Matinee"), Adam Speers (last seen in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"), Claire Titelman (last seen in "Frank and Cindy"), Megan Robinson (last seen in "American Fiction"), Evelyn Anne Bulls, Damian Muziani (last seen in "Rustin"), Jesse Gallegos, A.J. Voliton, Adam Murray (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Pat Kiernan, and the voices of Shelby Young, Ryan Bartley.
RATING: 7 out of 10 miniature Stay-Puft marshmallow men (Do they ever say WHAT these are, exactly? They can't be ghosts because there's no living marshmallow mascots, so what ARE they?)
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