Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire

Directed by Gil Kenan, Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire follows several characters, including Paul Rudd’s Gary and Carrie Coon’s Callie, as they attempt to prevent a death-chilling god from building a spectral army. Filmmaker Kenan, armed with his and Jason Reitman’s screenplay, does a terrific job of instantly capturing the viewer’s interest and attention, as Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire kicks off with a fun and thoroughly promising opening stretch that establishes both the aforementioned threat and the series’ recurring characters – with the entertaining atmosphere heightened by Kenan’s peppy visuals and several first-class performances. It’s disappointing to note, then, that the picture begins its slow-but-steady descent into irrelevance as it progresses into a meandering and distressingly uninvolving midsection, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that the arms-length atmosphere is compounded by a proliferation of digressions and subplots of a hopelessly lackluster variety – with this particularly true of everything revolving around Mckenna Grace’s Phoebe and her tedious, tiresome friendship with a sullen ghost (Emily Alyn Lind’s Melody). By the time the larger-than-life and CGI-heavy finale rolls around, Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire has definitively cemented its place as the worst of the sequels within this otherwise solid franchise – which is a shame, certainly, given the potential afforded by the previous installment.

** out of ****