Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – non-spoiler review

While we’re on the record as not being huge fans of reboots and remakes, I haven’t minded the new versions of the Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire adds to that. The fact that Columbia Pictures has created a production company subsidiary, Ghost Corps, to focus on the building of the expanding the Ghostbusters brand means they’re taking it seriously. They may be taking it seriously as its own money-maker but they’re putting some effort behind it.

And that shows in the latest film in the franchise, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Following on from Ghostbusters: Afterlife we see that the Venkman family, with hanger-on/step-teacher Gary Grooberson joining them. They’ve taken up residence in the old firehouse and are trying to continue the work of the original Ghostbusters. An ancient ghost/deity/evil is about to be awakened and despite people trying to shut down the Ghostbusters, they need to come together and beat the big evil. We’ve heard that story and that formula before and while the movie doesn’t shy away from fitting into it, it’s a fun, and funny, action-sci-fi movie.

There were one or two elements that were reasonably signposted and the expansion of the Ghostbusters enterprise is introduced in a rather clunky way. The minor characters from Afterlife are introduced in much the same way. “I knew you were interning somewhere but not here,” isn’t a line someone would say to their new friend in the age of social media. Trevor would know what Lucky was up to. He’d be stalking her Instagram, let’s be honest.

There are a couple of moments of fan service that I responded to with a little eye roll. They weren’t really necessary and didn’t really add much to the plot other than to make this movie more closely relate to the 1984 original than Afterlife did. While Dan Ackroyd has a significant role, Billy Murray is there for the bare minimum and probably only to increase the tie/handover elements so that the next movie can focus on Paul Rudd and McKenna Grace, as it should because McKenna Grace is a great actress who deserves way more screentime in this franchise than anyone else, past or present.

If you like the originals, and liked Afterlife, you’ll enjoy Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. In terms of reboots and remixing of retro franchises, this one seems to be on the right track.