In my house, Ghostbusters is kind of “our thing.” Some couples collect models, great bottles of wine, artwork, antiques, whatever. In our house, we collect Ghostbusters stuff. Almost anything related to Ghostbusters that has been released over the years is probably residing in our home in some form or another. It’s a movie that meant a lot to our childhoods (I am old enough to have seen it in theaters, and even sat alone as a youngster in the theater because it was so crowded and only single seats were left), and my boyfriend and I even saw Ghostbusters on our first date at a repertory screening during the 2009 LA Film Festival.
So for me, Ghostbusters is serious business (or as serious as you can be about a movie—this is just a piece of art, after all, not a matter of life or death), and I had been cautiously optimistic about this new movie since a lot of the marketing over the last few months hadn’t completely won me over. But when everything was said and done, I found Feig’s Ghostbusters to be not only entertaining and funny, but it also managed to have a few clever tricks up its sleeves when it came to incorporating all those iconic moments, accouterments, and aspects that we fell in love with from the first film over 30 years ago. Do not go into this expecting a retread; Feig cleverly mixes things up in some pretty interesting ways.
Sure, there are a few rough patches in this Ghostbusters, and both its villain and finale lack a bit of that dramatic “oomph” I was hoping for, but by and large, I left the theater happy and with a goofy-ass grin on my face from this new chapter, and I’m really hoping we get to see more from this entire team. Oh, and Kate McKinnon frigging rules in it, too.
Ghostbusters starts off with a fun haunting at the Aldridge Mansion (à la the library ghost opener in the original) and then we’re introduced to Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), a physics professor at Columbia University who is up for tenure, which means she needs to conduct herself in a manner befitting the pedigree of her employer. To her dismay, she learns that a book she published with her friend Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) years ago on paranormal phenomena was released without her consent, and she goes to confront her old pal, who is now working alongside an eccentric engineer by the name of Jillian Holtzmann (McKinnon). While Erin is looking to escape her paranormal past, Abby has continued her research on the supernatural and embraced her oddball professional choices.
But when they find out that an actual ghost may be haunting their fair city, Abby and Erin put their differences aside and form a paranormal research team with Jillian. Their first client happens to be Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones), an MTA worker who encountered a ghost while on the job. Patty, being quite the NYC historian, offers to lend her services to the team and we see how these four women, with the help of their hapless secretary, Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), deal with the impending apocalypse brought about by a loner named Rowan (Neil Casey) who is hell-bent on opening a vortex that would unleash thousands of tortured spirits and ghouls on the city, which would undoubtedly lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Comedy can be an extremely subjective thing, so if you’re not a fan of this cast going into Ghostbusters, there’s really no way this movie is going to win you over. As someone who has followed McCarthy since her days on Gilmore Girls, and really enjoys the work of the other trio of actresses (McKinnon is pretty much THE reason we watch Saturday Night Live anymore), I thought the core four had great chemistry together onscreen, and their comedic timing is pretty top-notch from start to finish. And yes, McKinnon proves here that she’s a treasure trove of hilarity—I would watch this Ghostbusters a few more times just for her performance alone. Hemsworth, whose sense of humor we’ve gotten glimpses of in recent Marvel movies, is absolutely hysterical in Ghostbusters, too, becoming a bit of scene-stealer at times.
Some other great supporting players who lend their talents to this Ghostbusters include Ed Begley Jr., Andy Garcia, Cecily Strong, Charles Dance, Karan Soni (who had a great minor role in Deadpool) and Silicon Valley’s Zach Woods. It’s already been announced that most of the original cast from the ’84 Ghostbusters would return for this new film, so I’m not necessarily ruining anything by saying that, but I’ll just go ahead and warn those looking for more shenanigans from the likes of Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, or Winston Zeddmore that the original cast members are NOT reprising their iconic roles here. It’s a bummer, yes, but I’m actually okay with it, because just seeing those familiar faces was enough for me. After all these years, I’ve made peace with the idea that the 1980s chapter of Ghostbusters is now officially closed.
I’m a big fan of how the supernatural entities look in this Ghostbusters. They’re vibrantly ethereal and really pop off the screen (reminding me a bit of the effects we saw in last year’s Goosebumps), and while I’m not sure how much of what we see in this film was done with practical effects like those seen in the original film, I still think the designs and the way these ghosts look make great homages to the work of Richard Edlund and his amazing team that worked tirelessly 30-plus years ago to bring the ghouls to life in the first Ghostbusters. There are some wonderfully inspired designs to the otherworldly stars in the new Ghostbusters (one scene features a gaggle of ghost rats running up from a subway platform), and I could spend another 2,000 words just talking about how much fun they were to watch as a fan.
Now, onto the stuff I didn’t enjoy as much. As far as villains go, Ghostbusters’ Rowan is a perfectly fine antagonist, but we never spend enough time with him to ever feel like he’s truly a threat, or even a fully fleshed-out character. We get glimpses into his sad little world, and Casey does a solid job with the material, but he never feels like the apocalyptic threat that he should be. Honestly, he reminded me a lot of Peter MacNicol in Ghostbusters II—he’s certainly been picked on a lot, but the story never convincingly connects those dots in order to make him a real threat to our protagonists.
My other issue is that Ghostbusters’ third act feels really rushed in comparison to the rest of the film. We spend a lot of time settling in with this world and these characters for most of the movie, but when everything goes to hell in NYC, those last 20 or so minutes rush by so quickly that you hardly can keep up. And even though the movie is consistently funny for about 90 percent of the time, there are a few cringe-inducing moments that left me cold (one cameo in particular featuring an older rock star actually made me audibly groan). Those moments will probably be big hits with mainstream audiences (the fans behind me at the screening lost their proverbial minds when they happened), but they just were not my personal cup of tea.
Oh, and we do get some of that new song from Fall Out Boy and Missy Elliott, so prepare yourselves (it’s only about 30 seconds of it). Ghostbusters does open with the original theme song, though, and I will be a complete nerd and say that I got chills when the movie started and that iconic music hit. I was immediately a kid again. There’s also a beautiful tribute card to the late, great Harold Ramis at the end of the film, which made me get a little teary-eyed.
The biggest shame with this Ghostbusters is that regardless of what I write about how much fun the movie is, how great of a new chapter it makes in the Ghostbusters franchise (in my mind, I’m considering this a reboot and not a remake), or how brilliantly funny the cast is at times, so many folks had their minds made up about this movie from the moment it was first announced. And really, that’s sad, because so many folks are going to needlessly dump on this Ghostbusters simply because they’re afraid of change.
I won’t say that this iteration doesn’t have its problems, because it does, but the good FAR outweighs the bad, and it successfully does what all good reimaginings do: it takes familiar source material, stays true to its intentions, but then also steps out and tries to be its own thing. As someone who loves the original film as much as I do, I really did like this Ghostbusters and I just hope that audiences will give it the shot it deserves.
Also, be sure to stay through the entire credits too; not only do we get another fantastic cameo in there, but there’s also a bit of nod to the 1984 Ghostbusters in there too that hints at (hopefully) more adventures for this team in the future.
Movie Score: 3.5/5
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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