Megan Coward – Google

I'm a huge fan of Ghostbusters and I absolutely loved Afterlife, so it really breaks my heart that this was not at all at the levels of any of the previous movies. I thought it was just lacking any kind of personality. It wasn't really that funny and it wasn't really action-packed, so there was nothing really holding it up. The 1980s movies might not have been the best technically speaking, but they had the humor. Even Afterlife had such good emotion and nostalgia that I always cry at the end. This was just so bland. I thought it was such a disservice that the whole "ice consuming the world" only happened towards the end and that it only lasted for, what, 15 minutes of the movie? What made the trailers look so good to me was that feeling of impending doom and dread and the movie was missing that entirely. I honestly think if the freezing had started from the beginning, maybe people were freezing to death with no explanation, and the world was slowly freezing while they had to figure out what was causing it and how to stop it, it would've made the movie 50x better. There would've been stakes. There would've been suspense. There wouldn't have been this whole buildup that led to basically nothing. Speaking of, I thought Garakka was pretty lame for a supposed god. Once again, the fact that he didn't show up until the end of the movie really took out any kind of suspense. Maybe if he had been haunting Phoebe's dreams or something, not just using her friend to get to her when we didn't really know why, it would've worked better. Some other problems with him included that it was near impossible to tell what he was saying. I needed a better motive for doing all this than "he was slighted once over a thousand years ago." The controlling other ghosts thing was cool, but since it was happening while he was in a brass ball and not in his true form, it kinda lost any coolness or scariness. He just never really felt that threatening to me until he was released from that ball. There was also just so much going on that it was hard to focus, I even found myself kind of bored throughout the movie. They needed to really hone in on one thing and not do 100 different things that, I found, didn't really add to the movie in any way. For example, what was the whole point of the chant they found at the library? The chant didn't even come into play at any point, and we know Podcast had recorded at least some of it before the original recording was destroyed, so why was it included if it was never intended to be used? This movie just fell so flat for me and it's such a shame because Afterlife was so good on so many levels and they seem to have completely lost it with this movie. I would rather have had no sequel at all than get this.

The one thought that lingered in the back of my mind throughout this whole movie - the father impregnated his dead wife's sister and one of the first things she says to her nephew is, "I am going to be your mother now." 🤮 The blatant perversity ruined everything else in this movie for me, although it did quite a good job of doing that on it's own. While the animation was gorgeous, as always, the story and clarity were really lacking. The summary claimed that the main character, Mahito, would be going into a world between life and death and that this would be a fantasy about life, death, and creation. None of that is actually what happened, pretty much, and I can't even tell you what really happened throughout this movie, it just didn't make any sense plot-wise. The pacing was off, the message was unclear (unless it was the disgusting message of it being okay to forget and replace your dead mother as soon as another suitable woman comes along), the characters were bland and repetitive - it was overall, a very poor movie by any standards, but from the studio that gave us masterpieces like Howl's Moving Castle, this is just severely disappointing and lackluster. Don't waste 2 hours on this movie, I don't know why it has such great reviews.

Watched for Dylan O'Brian. There was not enough Dylan O'Brian. Frankly, they should've switched the roles between him and Mark Wahlberg because the movie would probably have been 'infinitely' better (see what I did there?). The glaring age gap between Mark and the other characters, particularly the woman (Nora? Don't know actress' name), ruins a lot of the premise (considering they should've been born around the same time if they had previously died very close to the same time). Overall, concept was interesting, execution was less than poor, and as a rule of thumb, always have Dylan O'Brian play a main character. Also, if they're all trying to keep themselves alive, why do they use things with the infinity logo or license plates that literally say 'reincarnation? So dumb.