Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire review – One star for the worst film of the year so far

When confronted with truly awful franchise “content” it is tempting to pull on the sackcloth, daub your body with ashes and keen about the end of film as we once knew it. There have been worse movies than Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (not that I’ve reviewed a weaker one this year). The industry still produces first-rate mainstream entertainment. But this wretched farrago comprehensively showcases so much that is currently wrong with the Hollywood sausage-maker.

Remember Ghostbusters, a diverting slab of 1980s trash that abandoned the big screen after one largely dire sequel? The team behind the 2016 all-woman reboot understood the brief and, for all that film’s flaws, delivered a biff-bang diversion that didn’t pretend it was belatedly following up The Godfather Part II.

That wasn’t going to stand. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, from 2021, had its moments, but the sense of reverence to the, ahem, legacy was wearying. There is some recognition of that overseriousness in a livelier sequel that brings the hitherto Oklahoman Spengler family – daughter and granddaughter of Harold Ramis’s late character – back to the firehouse in New York City where it all began.

The still hugely overqualified Carrie Coon is here as mom Callie. Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace return as the kids Trevor and Phoebe. Paul Rudd is on hand as Callie’s partner. All are now poised to protect the city from extradimensional attacks of slime and ambulatory possession of giant landmarks.

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The experience is akin to squinting at a magic-eye painting. It just seems like a mass of unrelated dots. What am I supposed to be enjoying here? There is sort of a plot. Kumail Nanjiani turns up as a hustler in second-hand trash who has happened upon a possessed sphere from the Central Asian republic of McGuffinstan (not really). If you have trouble grasping exactly who is returning from what astral plane to wreak what sort of havoc, Patton Oswalt is here to deliver a lecture more boring than anything Ian McKellen managed in The Da Vinci Code. Something, something, magic antlers. Something, something, urban apocalypse. The phrase “will this do?” has never been more implicit.

There is a lot more where that came from, but the story is merely a mechanism for engaging with the “lore” and accommodating familiar old faces. Before too long Bill Murray (always creatively uninterested, so hard to criticise his demeanour here), Dan Aykroyd (tolerable as a sadder Ray) and Ernie Hudson (the most engaged of the old team) are back before the camera. Annie Potts reprises the perky secretary. William Atherton does more crusty antagonist. Fans of James Acaster, the dry English comic, may rub their eyes on seeing him make a first appearance as a jargon-spouting spook expert. He avoids embarrassment.

The focus on young people suggests the studio sees Frozen Empire as a family film

The flurry of box-ticking is exhausting. Helping out at the emotional core, Paul Rudd’s Gary Grooberson, formerly the kids’ teacher, works hard at bonding with troubled young Phoebe. In a subplot that nearly comes off, she forms a close relationship with a lonely ghost, young at the time of her death, who seems to be inviting a gay reading. There are the seeds of a more interesting story there, but each time we achieve near-poignancy the action veers yet again into green-goo attack and unconvincing pseudoscience. When in doubt, characters say “quantum mechanics” as if that brushes aside all concerns about the film’s unhappy relationship with the supernatural.

The focus on young people suggests the studio sees Frozen Empire as a family film. That is certainly how the first Ghostbusters played. But it worked with a younger audience – and spawned a successful cartoon series – by never taking itself remotely seriously. The reverence for the past here does nobody any favours. It is as if a 1984 kids’ film tried to get them interested in the collected lore and backstory of Abbott and Costello. We all need to move on.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is in cinemas from Friday, March 22nd