Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a remarkably innovative movie in one respect: It takes a famously crazy farce as its wellspring and uses it as the source material for a relatively earnest teen drama. I’ve never seen anything like it. I never want to see anything like it ever again.
The 1984 original is an out-and-out comedy from its first moment, when the Columbia University parapsychologist Peter Venkman completely ignores the evidence that a male grad student he’s testing is actually psychic because he’s trying to use the test to seduce a female grad student. And it climaxes with a 100-ft. Marshmallow Man lumbering up Columbus Circle ready to destroy the world.
In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a family on its uppers—middle-aged mother, teenage son, tween daughter—moves to a small town...