First Look at '#Ghostbusters: Afterlife' | '#GhostbustersAfterlife

First Look at Ghostbusters: Afterlife


Director Jason Reitman conjures the spirit of the 1984 original in the upcoming film, which focuses on a single mom and her two kids.

Hauntings are real. They happen all the time, although not necessarily in a supernatural sense.

Regrets about the past. Guilt over lost moments. Unfinished business.

The single mom and her two kids at the center of Ghostbusters: Afterlife have all these conflicts, complications, and issues—but on top of that, this family is also dealing with actual free-floating, full-torso vaporous apparitions, focused nonterminal repeating phantasms, and Class 5 full-roaming vapors.

Real nasty ones too.

A trailer for the July 10 film will debut on Monday, December and Vanity Fair got an exclusive glimpse of the new characters at the heart of the story, with The Leftovers’ Carrie Coon starring as mom Callie, I, Tonya’s Mckenna Grace as her science-obsessed daughter Phoebe, and Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard as gearhead son Trevor. They have left everything they know and moved to a small town in Oklahoma after inheriting property from the father she didn’t know.

Director and cowriter Jason Reitman (Up in the Air, Juno) takes over filmmaking duties from his own father, Ivan Reitman, who directed the original two Ghostbusters films, and returns for this one as a producer. Afterlife “is a new adventure that connects back to the Manhattan Crossrip of 1984,” Reitman said, unlike the 2016 all-female reboot, which started its story from scratch and existed in a different storytelling universe.

“Manhattan Crossrip” is the technical term for that long-ago bizarre incident in New York involving an apocalypse-summoning skyscraper, a gargantuan killer marshmallow man, and four working stiffs who managed to fight back against an ancient Sumerian God named Gozer.

Most of the original cast have committed to returning as their classic characters, although it’s not clear in what capacity they'll appear. (Harold Ramis died in 2014, and Rick Moranis, who has limited his screen work in recent years, is not expected to reprise his role.)

We probably won't see much of the classic characters until the film itself reveals what became of them over the past three decades. Callie and her family are also wondering how those guys fit into their lives.

“As the family arrives at an old farm, they begin to discover their connection to the original Ghostbusters,” Reitman said. “Trevor and Phoebe are about to find out who their grandfather was and whether they’re ready to pick up the proton pack themselves.”

Reitman doesn’t want to confirm much else about the family’s history, but people may already notice some familiarity in their appearance.

In the collapsing barn of their farmhouse, they find an old car, bloomed with rust, hidden beneath a tarp—the retro-ambulance turned ghost-hunting mobile, Ecto 1. In this shot, Trevor lays eyes on his new ride for the first time, originally hinted at a year ago in the movie’s teaser.

The cinematographer on the film is Eric Steelberg (Dolemite Is My Name, (500) Days of Summer), who has known Jason Reitman since they were teenagers and worked with him on all of his films.


Strange objects litter the property the family has inherited. COURTESY SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

Elsewhere in the house, which is packed with a mountain of books and lots of bizarre technology, Phoebe will find a device that reads psychokinetic energy. Ghostbusters fans will recognize that immediately as a tool of the trade from the original movies.

“The joy of cowriting a film like this is imagining the sound of Ecto-1’s engine revving back to life or the moment a PKE meter lights up for the first time and begins leading you toward your destiny,” said Reitman, who penned the script with Monster House and City of Ember filmmaker Gil Kenan.


Finn Wolfhard's Trevor gets the family car running. COURTESY SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

While her brother tinkers with the car, Phoebe finds herself transfixed by the mystery of their new town—not just by the peculiar subjects in their dilapidated home, but strange rumblings from a nearby mine. In this shot, she and her schoolmate (played by Logan Kim) ignore warning signs to venture closer to the abandoned and dangerous place.


Mckenna Grace as Phoebe and Logan Kim as her friend explore ruins of an old mine. COURTESY SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

Trevor and Phoebe may actually know less about the Ghostbusters than anyone. What happened in 1984 is as mysterious to them as Van Halen and Run-DMC is to Billie Eilish.

Fortunately, they have a summer school teacher named Mr. Grooberson (played by Paul Rudd) who was a kid when the Manhattan Crossrip occurred. Although later generations may think of it as a myth, or not think of it at all, he remembers it obsessively and is excited to pass on what he knows.

Here we see the teacher stunned to be holding an actual ghost trap. It’s been a while since he’s seen anything like this, and never this close.


It's a trap! Paul Rudd's Mr. Grooberson examines a relic from the Ghostbusters of yesteryear. KIMBERLY FRENCH

He might think he already knows a lot, but all of them are about to get an education in the otherworldly.

H/T: We Got This Covered, GhostbustersNews.com.

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