Returning to New York City with her children, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), and her boyfriend, Gary (Paul Rudd), Callie (Carrie Coon) is trying to make the old firehouse left to her by her father feel like a home. It is easier said than done as she is also following in her father’s footsteps as a Ghostbuster, but when a chase through the city after the Hell’s Kitchen Sewer Dragon results in massive damage to city property, Mayor Walter Peck (William Atherton) seizes the opportunity to shut the operation down. With the Ghostbusters on notice, an ancient spirit also seizes the opportunity to return to power and sink the world into a new Ice Age. 

Gil Kenan directs Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a sequel to Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), itself a legacy sequel to the original franchise skipping over Paul Feig’s 2016 reboot. The script was co-written with Reitman and was originally slated for a holiday release by Sony Pictures, but bumped to a spring frame so that the cast could help market the title. It is an odd release window, a possible sign of faltering faith in the title from the studio, but to be fair, the more appropriate July 4th weekend is already pretty full, not to mention Despicable Me 4 splitting the family audience. Running 115 minutes, the film is walking the line between new and old, bringing back many of the iconic ghosts and devices as well as Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts all reprising their roles from the 1980s. 

It opens with a flashback to New York City in the early 1900s as a team of firefighters storm into a building to find it not on fire, but frozen. In the corner of the room, dressed in ancient armor, Dadi (Natalie Cousteau) holds an orb and mutters an incantation. The film then jumps forward to the present day as the Ghostbusters are chasing down the dragon. It can be admired that the film does not spend time explaining what the Hell’s Kitchen Sewer Dragon is – other than the name, it is all we need to know, anyway – but this opening gambit is indicative of one of the major problems with legacy sequels; they are so intent on copying the past that they never find their own unique voice almost afraid to push forward and not weave in enough nostalgia. The banter between the family is just atrocious and the dialogue is even more unnatural than the spectral dragon they are chasing. If they were not stuck in the car together and constantly reminding us that they have spent long swathes of time together, you would think they just met with how little chemistry this family unit displays. Kenan is unsure who he wants to focus on more, the adults or the children, but their competition for control over the scene results in a draw, and audiences find themselves unimpressed, unamused, and unenthused. 

Once the basic framework is laid out and the two major stakes are set – the Ghostbusters at risk of being disbanded and Pheobe being grounded due to her age – the film begins to expand at an exponential rate. The already large core ensemble will eventually grow to twelve characters deep, and it is simply too many people to keep track of. Characters will be missing at the start of sequences only to reappear in the scene as quickly as they disappear again. Despite this stumbling block – a product of its overextension – the film is not without real heart of love from its creators. This is not just a cash grab from a studio dusting off its old IP, rather it does feel like an ode to the influence that Ivan Reitman had on both the industry and his son, Jason. 

Ever eager to pick up the mantle left behind by her grandfather, Frozen Empire is centered more around Pheobe’s experience than anyone else, even with Trevor’s consistent reminders that he is an adult now and more than capable of taking on these calls by himself. An interesting note, though one that should be taken with a grain of salt as the MPAA is a notoriously fickle body that reflects the sensibilities of the time, Ghostbusters II (1989) was rated PG against the PG13 rating of all three of the recent iterations; the original was released as PG, as well, though more by default as it was already playing at the time of PG13’s introduction on July 1, 1984. All this to say that it is surprising how much younger this film feels geared despite this higher rating, but again, this is more a product of its time as very few live-action releases get anything less than PG13 these days. Further, the action comedy genre really does not play anymore today. The script is trying to adopt the affectations of the classic 80s but with a modern sheen to its production design and a modern cast, none of it feels like it belongs together. It is not a problem unique to Frozen Empire but all of these legacy sequels that try to take the campy and scrappy iconic props of their predecessors and update them to look sleeker so that they do not stand out too much in the digital landscapes and battles all end up looking more artificial than they did some 40 years ago.

Back to Pheobe, she has a really tender storyline to navigate. Much of her screen time is spent investigating the strange events that are happening across the city with Podcast (Logan Kim), Ray Stantz, and Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani). In a fun library sequence, Dr. Hubert Wartzki (Patton Oswalt) helps to tilt the film into its main action, explaining what the heavy, brass orb covered in glyphs from the opening scene is; the same orb that Nadeem brought to Ray’s paranormal shop seeking to gain some quick cash on the sale. Essentially, it is a primitive containment unit that holds back Garraka, an ancient sorcerer who was stripped of his power eons ago by an elite order of sorcerers known as Fire Masters. 

As a villain, Garraka is a great and terrifying force, but his involvement is primarily pushed into the final 30 or so minutes of the film. There is something to be said of building up to an entrance, especially for the main villain of the story, but in addition to Garraka, the containment unit in the firehouse has malfunctioned and all of these lesser ghosts have been released back onto the streets. It is something that occupies a lot of story, but almost all in dialogue. Other than Slimer, we do not see that many other ghosts which is a good thing because Frozen Empire does seem to want to break free from the temptation to simply rehash what came before it once it gets moving, but this added talked-about plot takes away from what is actually interesting. 

There is one additional ghost that has a strong influence over the story; Melody (Emily Alyn Lind). She meets Pheobe in the park to play chess and the two begin to bond over their feeling of separation from their families. In Pheobe’s case, her family was all pulled away on a call, and in Melody’s case, something is holding her back from being able to cross over and see her family who all died in a fire. It is an incredibly emotional arc that helps to tie the film together, though it lacks the nuance to really land. It gets confusing in how slow it delves out the information and the long slogs of extra material in between Pheobe and Melody’s scenes, that it gets flat-out weird. She is a disciple of Garraka’s, not from ancient times but she believes that if he is freed, she will be able to see her family again in the spirit world. In order to do this, she needs to trick Pheobe into separating her spirit from her body so that Garraka can take control of the girl to recite an incantation that he is unable to do so in his ghostly form. Broad strokes, this betrayal arc is really poignant and helps to reinforce the later themes of family and teamwork, but for such a central thread it feels rushed on the page to the detriment of the overall experience. The dynamic between the two reads incredibly peculiar at times, and on a strictly plot level, we never are quite sure if Melody’s family fire was intentionally set or not which makes her an even more beguiling character as her portrayal of grief is hard to decipher.

Once Garraka is finally free, he is a really terrifying force with a great design. He towers over everything else in the frame, his long skeletal arms end with bony fingers that look like spider legs, and two massive ram horns grow out from the side of his skull. He does not necessarily look like an ice demon, but rather we believe it simply because his nemesis are the fire masters. It is in this conflict where the clashing tones of the film become impossible to ignore. Nanjiani is doing his normal routine of goofy oddball to help salve some of the younger audiences who may be truly frightened as the film turns into the third act climax, but he is stuck regurgitating the same punch line over and over again that it is hard to take anything we see seriously anymore. To be fair, Murray also comes in with a few quips as he faces off against the ancient demon, but his zingers land with much more accuracy as the intention and delivery are so far and away from what Nanjiani is being asked to do. 

With all of this buildup, the showdown between the Ghostbusters, the Fire Master, and Garraka leaves much to be desired. He is dispatched with about three blasts from the proton pack along with a little help from Nadeem. It is a real letdown for audiences expecting a more robust standoff, but the middle act did not support anything more complex than what was presented. Further, this is where the massive ensemble really drags the film down. The camera does not know where to focus and about 8 of the 12 people there are simply that, just there. We get a nice reunion bit of the original cast coming together at the containment unit, but up above on the garage floor where Pheobe and the rest of the 2020 gang are, there is little cause for excitement. For a world-ending demon, he quickly fell and did not put up much of a fight. 

Frozen Empire, more than anything, was really harmed by its shifted release dates. A long ad campaign that heavily featured New York being turned into a tundra – some of the best scenes in the film – lost their impact by the time the film finally hit cinemas even for those who largely avoid trailers. The marketing campaigns of these bloated budget films need to permeate so deep that it becomes impossible to ignore and they need to hook an audience by showing off all of the flashiest moments. What we get here feels more like a bait and switch from what we were promised, even by the title alone, because the film is trying to do so much. Thankfully, the film was not split into a Part 1/Part 2 scenario – a terrible release pattern that is slowly coming back into vogue – but short of making this an unsustainable 180-minute endeavor, the script desperately needed another rewrite to pare down all the ancillary material allowing for a more robust plot. Setting itself up for at least a third installment, it is strange because there is so much here that points to wanting to be able to step outside of the shadow of the original, but the way the film concludes makes it hard to believe that Murray et al will not be back to save the day and steal the scene once again.