Confident, often brash, depiction of thriving corporatism; punishable atheism and a hybrid of new means to defeat old beliefs in a soufflé of comedy and horror.

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2013)

I suppose there is an idea at the core of Ghostbusters somewhere; a high-concept film, about a group of people essentially adopting the role of contemporary exorcists, that straddles some sort of often vacant place on a line that separates non-reality with what could feasibly happen if you were religious. It is a curious thing when a text attempts to handle that of demons, ghouls and ghosts. Deep down, I suppose, it is somewhat perversely pleasurable to convince ourselves of their existence. As years have passed, germs have replaced the invisible monsters that-once-were as the cause for illness; technology has been able to deduce whether or not haunted locales truly are as such while science; theories on evolution and modernity in general has done 'wonders' to disprove the idea that religion and so forth are as genuine as everybody thought they were for so long.
There was a line in the Tarantino-penned 1996 horror film "From Dusk til Dawn" when the anti-heroic lead states that "if there is a Hell", and that the monsters occupying an adjacent room "are from it", then there's "got to be a Heaven". Should the existence of ghosts, demons and whatnot run in tandem with the theory that there is a heaven and an afterlife? Probably, and yet in spite of all this sweeping modernity doing well to disprove the spirit world and the idea of an 'afterlife', there are still those who remain unconvinced of a ghost's inauthenticity; remain staunch that they've encountered one and remain adamant that the line between our world and the next not only exists, but is thinner than you think. One of the (admittedly, few) charms of the 1984 horror/comedy Ghostbusters is how it exploits the belief of that line while keeping everything as reigned in as it does. This is not, for the best part, an all-out horror film depicting nasty, invading spirits doing their utmost to invade a densely populated human locale, although it does descend into that by the end. Moreover, this is a clash of the old and the new; an unabashed depiction of hauntings and ghosts as very much real but a depiction of science and technology otherwise associated with disproving God; Heaven; Hell and reincarnation through spirit being used to counter said entities.
New York City must be one of the most populated zones in the world, but does that mean there'd be more or fewer ghosts there than somewhere largely vacant, such as that attic in an old, isolated English manor house from centuries ago located somewhere in the countryside. Regardless, the leads therein the film discover a fair few of them merely going about their routines in a manner that is underplayed and quite funny but, one senses, realistic to the cause should a large uncovering of spirits ever unfold. Ivan Reitman's film mixes the audacious with the bubble-gum, a depicting people coming into contact with spiritual entities although sadly never really learning anything nor becoming more enriched as a result of it. While the film is quite good fun and often funny, it comes across as too superficial to be anything wonderfully inventive nor much more than frivolously academic. It's often quite childish, even dull in places. Admittedly, where not every film of its ilk can be as good as "The Sixth Sense", where the presence of ghosts in a characters life leads to an enriched bond with a psychologist, Ghostbusters does hit the odd mark.
The film follows four New York City based men, two Caucasian; an African American and a Jew, who set up their own business in a disused fire station that specialises in ghostly phenomena. Initially, the men (still minus the African American) are ill-suited to the practical aspect of their work where the theory is all in the right place. Uncovering a poltergeist in a library archive, they can only run screaming for their lives when it turns uglier than they'd like. Buoyed by their experience, they have enough confidence to set up this business when a university cuts their funding and the enterprise turns into a ghost 'busting' organisation upon realising there's money in making the ghosts go away – a sort of supernatural pest exterminator. Among them is Bill Murray's psychologist Peter Venkman, a man whose womanising ways is evident in the opening and who remains largely sceptical on the whole library phenomena anyway where his partners do not. At the other end of the spectrum is Harold Ramis' Egon Spengler, a dry man and the most intelligent of the four who is too deep into his work to notice the affection shown towards him by their eventual receptionist. Somewhere in the middle is the "funny-as-Murray" but "as-good-at-his-job-as-Ramis" Dan Akroyd, who plays Raymond Stantz.
Narrative is, of course, superfluous in a film like Ghostbusters; its end-of-the-world routine, as Sigorney Weaver's Dana Barrett discovers a gateway into a doom-laden alternate dimension, is as nonsensical as it gets in a film which might otherwise have been quite intelligently theological. The true pleasures lie in the film's would-be tryst involving the ever-humorous Venkman and the delight in the way he shares his scenes with Weaver, although we do not come to observe much closure to any of it – nor indeed do we Spengler's with the receptionist. The film is more interested in cracking on with its primary tract of special effects and unexplained alternative universes which, one assumes, comes complete with their own dynamic structures but the likes of which are not explored here. But it remains difficult to get angry with the film because it has with it a boyish energy; it does the rare thing for an American blockbuster in actually trying to sell to you this U.S.P. innocently and fondly, as if it cares for it so much and wants you to share in this fondness. In the ever declining cinematic world of 'event' movies within which we live, that alone is justification for checking Ghostbusters out.