‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ or — ‘Ersatz: The Movie’?
‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ (2021) is a sickening, appalling, offensive, creatively cynical, faux-heartstring pulling, disgusting movie that represents everything revolting about contemporary cinema and modern day anti-intellectual thinking. Yet it’s also not that bad, quite an easy watch and, until the vomit-inducing final half hour, works relatively well as a piece of carefully manufactured easy-going fluff. It’s like eating a knock-off chocolate bar, finding it’s not that bad and then, when you reach the last bite, discovering the gooey centre was made out of poo all along.
The story is about a family who have no male parental figures and so feel ripped straight out of the Spielberg ‘How to Build a Dysfunctional Family’ guidebook. They inherit a remote farm because their grandfather has died. This is handy because they are about to be evicted for reasons that aren’t too clear (it’s either because the mother is a drunken nightmare who desperately needs a social worker or because the script writers needed a reason to move onto page 6).
Anyway, it turns out that their grandfather was killed by ghosts and that he wore glasses and was a scientist and had a proton pack as well as Ecto-1 and was a Ghostbuster and was friendly with someone called Janine… and nobody knows who he is. The film furiously teases us to the cusp of ejaculation until our cocks are red raw in wondering who this mysterious grandfather could be for the entire first hour, so if you’re a fan of tension free cinema then this movie is for you!
The kids are geeky and they make other geeky friends and strange things happen in the small town and they are told about the original Ghostbusters by their teacher even though a monster marshmallow man destroying New York would still be talked about today because it was, essentially, 9/11 involving giant confectionery making it even more history shattering than the real 9/11. But that’s beside the point.
After that the kids slowly discover their grandfather’s ghostbusting equipment they have no idea what any of it is even though every single member of the audience knows exactly what it is so we’re back to tension free cinema again. However, the little girl, Phoebe, is guided by the ghost of her grandfather regarding how to use this equipment. Phoebe wants nothing more than to be a scientist so it makes perfect sense that she should happily accept being guided by a fucking ghost in this endeavour.
With the help of their teacher they accidentally release a demonic being because the scriptwriters need a way to move onto page 58 and before long everyone is filled with terror because the ending of the original ‘Ghostbusters’ (1984) is about to burst out of the mountain and cover the world in a permanent layer of nostalgia.
And that’s pretty much about it.
What’s remarkable about all this cynical wallowing (and it is frequently nothing but cynical wallowing) is that ‘Afterlife’ isn’t that bad. In fact, for the first hour or so ‘Afterlife’ is a pretty decent watch that’s incredibly easy to digest, despite our lacerated cock-tips. The performances are handled well, the script is nothing special but kinda cute and it genuinely feels like the sort of kid’s movie that’s been lacking for a while. Sure, it’s constructed out of almost nothing but references to the original movie but Hollywood sequels have always operated like this with most follow-ups being either cash-ins or complete replicas, so we can’t really complain now. ‘Afterlife’ is simply being, like a spooky spectre, transparent about it all.
And then the climax kicks in and the offensiveness goes off the charts and the nostalgia levels so intense it’s like being water-boarded by a berserk J.J. Abrams. Suddenly the film breaks its back to the point we can hear its spine snapping as it contorts and inserts itself into every single reference point of the original that it can. We have now entered a universe where no other film, no other piece of culture exits other than ‘Ghostbusters’. ‘Afterlife’ suddenly turns the franchise into Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson from ‘Vertigo’ (1958) as he desperately attempts to reconstruct Judy into Madeline, obsessively ensuring every single hair, every eye-lash is a perfect replica and ‘Afterlife’ is as unsettling, crazy and ultimately depressing as Scottie’s mental illness.
Now I loved the original ‘Ghostbusters’ when I was a kid but, like growing out of believing in the supernatural, it’s something I tend to look back at now more with embarrassment than affection or adoration. That meant ‘Afterlife’ was something of a problem for me because this film not only deifies the original movie as though it was Christ on the cross (as opposed to what it was — a series of sex pest jokes with nifty special effects) but also declares that science is vital, important and wonderful only to throw that all away at the climax and end up as a ludicrous celebration of the rabidly anti-scientific, charlatan driven, abusive bullshit nonsense that is the paranormal. Christ, I mean the end of the movie shouldn’t be the distasteful desecration of a dead actor but of Dan Aykroyd in a padded cell!
I can really tell why ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ has completely split critics and audiences because if you want a fun, well made, vaguely entertaining movie with a soundtrack that’s a carefully laced necklace of delicately wrought sonic memberberries then you’ll get on fine with this. If, however, you put any sort of discernment or judgement into this movie whatsoever ever then it not only falls apart but raises disturbing and ethical questions about modern day filmmaking and the abandonment of rational thinking in the face of untrammeled nostalgia.
“But what’s so bad about nostalgia?” you might ask. The problem is it’s technically a psychopathological disorder. Now THAT’S what should be really terrifying you.
