Ghostbusters: Afterlife Power of the Dog (12A)
✪✪
(12A)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a disappointing exercise in fan service that attempts to capture the spirit of the beloved 1984 blockbuster by aiming its proton pack directly at all the elements that made it fun and trapping them in a story designed to appeal to kids weaned on Stranger Things and all those toxic superfans who objected to 2016’s genderswapped iteration.
This latest reboot comes from
director Jason Reitman, who echoes his own family connection to the original (his dad, Ivan directed it) by giving his Ghostbusters a direct connection to its Bill Murray-led team. Thus we have Carrie Coon as Callie, a cash-strapped single mother who moves her two kids – awkward teen Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and awkward tween Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) – into the spooky farmhouse that her estranged father has left her.
The early parts do have some of charm, thanks mainly to the sardonic Coon, a sarcastic Paul Rudd (playing a seismologist reduced to teaching summer school), and Grace, whose turn as Phoebe is quite fun. Sadly, though, once the film re-introduces the original Ghostbusters, Reitman pretty much gives up any pretence that this is a film in need of a story of its own and starts blitzing us with artefacts, characters and who-yougonna-callbacks that are as tiresome as that pun.
General release
Though boasting a stellar cast and typically sumptuous visuals, this western-themed study in masculinity is built around a plot revelation so obvious and drawn out it dulls the impact of the more intriguing and macabre twist it ultimately builds towards. Benedict Cumberbatch takes the lead as Phil Burbank, a slumming-it cowboy in 1925 Montana who runs a cattle ranch with his more refined brother George (Jesse Plemons). When George suddenly takes a wife in a local widower named Rose (Kirsten Dunst, brilliant), an outraged Phil devotes himself to persecuting her and her effete son (Kodi Smit-mcphee). Alas the film is so coy here in its attempt at misdirection, it blinds director Jane Campion to the tragic trope the story ends up perpetuating, something that also gives Cumberbatch’s performance the whiff of Oscar bait. In selected cinemas and on Netflix from 1 December
Alistair Harkness