After inheriting a house in the rural Summerville, two kids, Phoebe (12) and Trevor (15) and their mom move there. Strange things keep happening in town, until the kids realize that their grandfather was the late Egon Spengler, a Ghostbuster. The latter set up an entrapment for the dark forces of Gozer, but they were freed from a coal mine built by Ivo Shandor. With the equipment of her grandfather, and the original Ghostbusters Peter, Ray and Winston, the kids are able to trap Gozer and save the town from an apocalypse.
A belated semi-sequel to “Ghostbusters II”, “Afterlife” is a soft reboot that is decent, though it works far better in the first half, when it strives to be original, then in the second half, when it strives to just be a predictable clone. The director Jason Reitman creates good new characters, the next generation of Ghostbusters, and the most is achieved in the charming Phoebe, who, although underwritten, still hints at a greater potential. Reitman also writes himself around the fact that Spengler did what he did, even though the scientist would never do that. The opening is pretty clever: a Ghostbuster is chased by an invisible ghost on a farm, and attempts to catch it in his trap—but due to a power outage, there is no electricity, making the trap null and void. Some of the lines of the kids have wit: for instance, one of them, annoyed by living in such a small, insignificant town, jokes:“I'm 4th generation dump". Phoebe also jokingly defends her brother at one point: “Technically, most of 15-year olds are virgins”. Paul Rudd also shines here and there as the lazy school teacher, who is so negligent he plays the horror movie "Cujo" in the class on TV. The new technical additions and gadgets include a remote powered ghost-trap on wheels that comes in handy during a car chase. Unfortunately, the second half is hijacked by copy-paste nostalgia references to the original, of which it becomes too much of a slave. The finale makes the same mistake as “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”, by just recycling the ending of the original, since having Gozer appear for a second time around feels too similar to the ending of “Ghostbusters”, which is too close to plagiarism. Had Ivo Shandor been the main villain, it would have all made far more sense. As if the character arcs are forgotten at that point, and the movie ends suddenly without an epilogue. Due to such excessive use of references and the iconography of the famed original in the last third, people cannot agree upon if it is a worthy homage or exploitation. "Afterlife" mostly succeeds in reviving the franchize, but it also shows how each subsequent "Ghostbusters" film is in one way or another a rip-off of the 1st film.
Grade:++
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