Ghostbusters (1984)

Review of ‘Ghostbusters’ (original)

Ghostbusters, a timeless classic everyone knows (unless you’ve been under a rock your entire life and never interacted with any human beings). I have decided to review this movie as it was my favourite of this season. Filled with adventure, action, comedy and some awesome devices.

To start off, I will give a summary of the plot of the film. We start off with our main protagonists, who are tracking and hunting ghosts. They stopped receiving funding and are kicked out of their original place, thus leading them to find a new place for themselves and their jobs. They are able to come across an old building in need of much repair, at first they were unsure of if they would take it or not, however after hearing how cheap it was, they claimed it as their own. Immediately begging work, they renovated the whole building and began work. Receiving calls and having an advertisement helped spread popularity of them. Then a rumour spread about an ancient god coming for New York. They prepare for the worst, and more bad things happen, but they are not to do with the god. A man who was not happy with the ghostbusters, makes their ghost keeping system shut down, releasing the ghosts into New York once again. All hell breaks loose (literally) and the god known as Gozer appears to them. Will they succeed? Watch and find.

Now, onto the actual review.

At the start, I felt like the pacing was perfect. Not too fast that we don’t know what’s happening, but not slow that it feels like it’s dragging on. Pacing later on however, not as good. I felt as if the lead up to the defeat of Gozer was fine, however the actual moment of defeating him went past rather quickly.

Obviously, lots of special effects were used to help make this film what it is, alongside the original imagination behind the story. The effects were extremely well executed, for its time of course. Our effects may be better now, however I do believe it was the breakthrough of its era. Visual and sounds effects were nothing short of amazing. Props to the designing and make-up teams. (Pun intended)

Characters were well built, and I didn’t have much questioning about them. Each character plays a part and nobody is just thrown in for one joke or moment, each character plays a valuable role. One character I would have liked to see more of was Slimer, the ghost (probably just because he was my favourite character). The appearance of Gozer reminds me of the star David Bowie, which I felt like was good timing and a reminder of the sad loss of him at the beginning of last year.

I know my review isn’t very long, however there was not much I would really fix at all. Great characters, storyline, effects and sounds make an excellent film, like this one. ‘Ghostbusters’ will forever be a favourite film of mine, and I would recommend it to anyone. Coming up to a Halloween, this is a great film if you are looking for some spirit vibes.