To say I grew up watching the Ghostbusters franchise isn’t an understatement by any measure of the word.
In fact, the original two films from 1984 and 1989 respectively, have always been a cornerstone of family fun in our household.
Overall, it’s great to see members of the original gang and the new Spengler family working together to fight ghosts.
Plus, they bring everything back to their roots in New York and that iconic firehouse.
While the film’s overall plot suffers from too much teenage angst and too many moving parts, I think the way they blended old Ghostbuster members and new is worth the kudos.
Plus, I’m always a fan of snappy comebacks and sarcasm, so that’s a plus in my book.
Not to mention, an evil ghost deity wielding fear so cold that it kills in seconds is definitely creepier than a giant marshmallow in my book.
Frozen Empire is an American supernatural comedy film directed by Gil Kenan from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jason Reitman.
It is the direct sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and the fifth film in the Ghostbusters franchise.
It clocks in at 115 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for supernatural action/violence, language, and suggestive references.
The film stars Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Celeste O’Connor, and Logan Kim, reprising their roles from Afterlife, alongside Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and William Atherton reprising their characters from the earlier films while Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Emily Alyn Lind, and James Acaster round out the cast.
In July 1904, New York City Fire Department (FDNY) firefighters found over thirty people frozen to death inside a gentlemen’s club, while an unintelligible chant played from a phonograph.
The only survivor is a woman in a brass suit of armor, clutching a mysterious orb.
In the present day, Callie Spengler (Coon), her boyfriend Gary Grooberson (Rudd), and her children Trevor (Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Grace) have moved into the New York firehouse.
At the same time, Trevor and Phoebe’s old friends Lucky Domingo (O’Connor) and Podcast (Kim) work with Winston Zeddemore (Hudson) and Ray Stantz (Aykroyd) respectively.
After catching the Hell’s Kitchen Sewer Dragon, the team faces backlash and threats from Mayor Walter Peck (Atherton), a longtime opponent of the Ghostbusters since the first film.
To appease Peck, Callie benches Phoebe from the field until she is a legal adult.
Upset at this, Phoebe goes to a nearby park to play chess, meeting and befriending a ghost named Melody (Lind), who died in a fire with her own family when she was 16 years old.
Ray and Podcast have been collecting cursed objects at Ray’s Occult Books.
One such patron, Nadeem Razmaadi (Nanjiani) sells Ray a strange brass orb, which belonged to his late grandmother.
When Ray tests its PKE levels, the orb unleashes a psychic charge that damages the wall around the firehouse’s ecto-containment unit, which is dangerously near capacity.
However, that’s not all the Ghostbusters have to face and I can say that it’s worth the wait to see how it all plays out.
Besides, the possessed Stay Puft mini marshmallows are back in all of their squishy chaos glory and it’s worth watching them be an adorable distraction.
If you’re a Ghostbuster fan, just ignore what the mainstream critics have been saying and go catch this flick yourself on the big screen!
