Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

25 December 2021

Following a family relative's death, a mother and her two children travel to rural Oklahoma to live off the local "dirt farmer's" land. Starring Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon and Paul Rudd, this starts with the Ghostbusters as a faded memory, and it plays through this family's stuggles with fitting into this small town having faced eviction and inherited debt. Only later when they start finding relics of the 80s do they begin to dig deeper into local and family history.

This is an enjoyable story, with good humor and casting to keep the film entertaining, and the "rediscovery" of Ghostbusters being a nice way to engage a new generation. It's a little out of place in the canon of things, given Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016) exists without even a mention here. I thought Paul Rudd's character was a great way to bridge that generational gap of "what are the Ghostbusters" and though this feels more like an epilogue to the original franchise instead of a renewal like the 2016 film, I wonder how this will impact the future of the franchise. Solid film, though the end just sort of... ends. 7/10