Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Ghostbusters frozen empire is directed by Gil Kenan and stars Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, McKenna Grace and Carrie Coon as the new ghostbusters family as well some familiar faces.

The movie follows them settling into being Ghostbusters as an ancient evil force is unleashed that they have to capture.

The best parts of this movie for me were the on the ground ghost busting, and fighting, and driving around NYC. If you like New York settings and you enjoyed that in the original ghostbusters this has plenty more.

This movie is also really funny at times, of course, the original ghostbusters films are genuine comedies with just a bit of absurd ghost action. This film does take the ghost stories quite seriously though. And I felt it dragged on a bit too much with its supernatural lore and taking itself too seriously, as well as a prolonged CGI fight. Again, it’s best when it’s funny. That sad, the movie is not actually horror level scary. But it plays more like a family action film with comedy throughout.

Visually this movie has a really dynamic feel, with camera movements often panning fluidly to follow Ecto 1 as it glides across the streets, there’s lots of great neon aesthetic lighting in parts of NYC, and some great architectural imagery at iconic monuments like the NY public library too.

And for longtime fans of the franchise there are plenty of callback moments to the original films that’ll have you feeling plenty nostalgic. If you’re a fan ackroyd fan you’ll be happy to know he gets plenty of screen time along with a very funny patron Oswald who has a couple scenes. Ernie Hudson pops to for quite a bit too. And Bill Murray is there for a glorified extended cameo along with one hilarious callback scene to the original film. And Annie Potts suits to and is hilarious!

The story has a decent emotional through line about family, including morals about step families and found families that sends a nice message too.

So, Ghostbusters frozen empire. It carries the legacy of the franchise injecting more action and spookiness than the originals but keeping plenty of humour to entertain old and new fans alike.

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