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New York. Gary Grooberson and Callie Spengler are a couple and continue with the Ghostbusters business, together with Callie's teenage kids Phoebe and Trevor. They are assisted by mentors Winston Zeddemore and Ray Stantz. When a certain Nadeem sells a metal orb to Ray, it turns out to be an ancient ghost trap which keeps demon Garraka trapped inside. However, Garraka forces a ghost girl, Melody, to befriend Phoebe, whose voice is used to break the orb and release Garraka, who initiates a mini-ice age in the city. Teaming up with Peter Venkman and Janine Melnitz, the Ghostbusters use Nadeem's firepowers to jointly hit Garraka and trap it inside the ghost containment unit.
The 5th official "Ghostbusters" film, "Frozen Empire" is surprisingly a better film than its rather too serious and too nostalgia-burdened predecessor "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", and works almost as some sort of live-action feature film adaptation of a "The Real Ghostbusters" episode, thus giving it more room to explore this imaginative world. A big kudos goes to the writer and director Gil Kenan who shows several clever, creative and inspired tricks while knitting this storyline. The opening is already clever: the camera pans down to the iconic Ghostbusters firehouse building, the door opens—and a horse carriage with firemen emerges, as the subtitles reveal the year is 1904. After their freezing paranormal encounter, the movie jump cuts to the present, when the Ghostbusters car chases after an eel-like blue ghost through the streets, using a fascinating new gadget—a ghost-catching drone. "Frozen Empire" has a whole array of stimulating little ideas (the "animated" stills depicting stone engravings of Garraka's ancient story; a possessor ghost "inserts" itself into the proton pack to try to use it against Trevor, but afterwards it flees into a pizza—which is immediately eaten by Slimer, in a moment of serendipity) and even a few comical lines (Podcast jokingly naming the ominous orb "the devil's testicle").
A subplot involving friendship between Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and a ghost girl, Melody, is even a bit philosophical and melancholic, though maybe out of the scope of the concept. A big negative point are three unnecessary sequences which again cater to nostalgia and plagiarize the original classic (the library ghost has a cameo, as does Walter Peck, now a mayor; dozens of Stay Puft Marshmellow minions are throw-away marketing ploys), which deducts from the quality. Despite swift writing, there is a big problem—the "core" team of the new Ghostbusters is murky. In the original, the four members formed an easily unified core team, while here the film is struggling with this. For instance, the characters of Trevor and Podcast are practically irrelevant for the story, underused, nor do they interact that well with the rest. This leaves the question: who is the main protagonist? It seems Phoebe, and then maybe Gary. Yet since Ray and Winston appear in substantial roles, the core team is always out of balance and "skewed". Therefore, only Phoebe and Gary form a 'rump' team, which feels incomplete. Nontheless, the finale with the villain is exciting, the pace is compact, whereas Kenan offers several unusual new ideas which further the plot.
Grade:++
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