The Problem About Ghostbusters: Afterlife

*Spoiler Alert*

The+Problem+About+Ghostbusters%3A+Afterlife

Toge Inumaki, Reporter

Ghostbusters: Afterlife was released in theaters Friday, November 19th, and critics are disappointed with the results. The Movie hit 63% on Rotten Tomatoes which isn’t too bad and 49% on Metacritic.

The film was seen as an adventure and takes place years after the events of Ghostbusters (1981). The film was more about the past and backlashes of what happened in the town, and the characters are only stopping the main villain instead of all the ghosts. It gives viewers more nostalgia for well-known characters such as Stay Puft Marshmallow and Slimer who were in the older movies, but they aren’t going to be much of an asset in this film.

Ghostbusters Afterlife is now released in theatres, and there is so much to talk about.  The movie begins with a Shadowy figure driving through the roads of Oklahoma late at night as an invisible specter chases after him (note that this takes place a couple of years after Ghostbusters 2). We see Egon Spangler, his face is slightly hidden, but he uses the trap in his hand to taunt the specter when trying to set off a trap. However, the power fails and Egon has to make a run for his life which he ends up meeting his demise.

Time skips to Egon’s adult daughter and the two kids, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace’s character) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard’s character). They end up going to the farm that Egon left for them, Phoebe finds a P.K.E. Meter Egon dropped on the floor and takes it up to a room where a chessboard is knocked over by her bed by Egon’s invisible ghost.

She picks up the chessboard and sets it up properly before leaving with her family to go out and eat dinner. Later on, Phoebe goes into her room and notices the chessboard has moved. This is the ghost of Egon who is trying to communicate with her, and he leads her to the floorboard where the ghost trap was placed. Later in the movie, he leads her to a proton pack that she tries to fix with the ghost trap while Egon is helping her.

She takes it to her teacher Mr. Gruberson who recognizes it and starts to retell Ghostbusters stories to Pheobe. Her new friend podcast, Mr. Gruberson, opens the trap and ends up releasing either the gatekeeper or the key master. It’s not really clear which one escaped, but then it flies back to an abandoned selenium mine just outside the town. The mine has some sort of shrine of Gozer, the main villain from the first film. Once Trevor gets the Ecto-1 working, they find a ghost roaming the streets. After which they get thrown in jail for driving without a license and destruction of property. Phoebe uses her one call to reach out to Ray Stantz who still owns the occult bookstore.

We found out that Venkman went back to Academia to teach marketing, Winston is now a rich business owner in New York. Eventually, Gozer’s terror dogs the gatekeeper and the key master possess Cali, and Mr. Gruberson which ended up summoning Gozer just like in the original movie The kids managed to trap the key master, and they follow Egon’s original plan; this leads Gozer back to the farmhouse where Egon had buried dozens of traps under the ground. The power fails once again, but all three remaining original ghostbusters show up with proton packs to help fend off Gozer.

Finally, we see a fully formed ghost of Egon where he’s actually visible in ghost form. Trevor uses his proton pack to kickstart the power and set off the traps, sealing Gozer and her minions. Winston then looks at the beat-up Ecto-1 and says he’ll take her back to New York and fix her up. The movie ends, and we find out there may be a part two to this film.

Many Ghostbusters fans thought the film should’ve deserved better ratings, and it made up to $60 million during the opening weekend with the addition of 224 votes to recommend and 93% of the people loved this movie. Personally, the movie was the same as everyone else. I thought it deserved a higher rating such as 75-83%, but I also believe that the Ghostbusters 2016 remake was better than this one. Overall, I enjoyed it so much and I hope the story continues, and we’ll get to see what happens next.