Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Review - 4 Ups & 6 Downs
4. The Terrible Pacing
Frozen Empire is the second-longest movie in the series - clocking in a mere minute shorter than the 2016 reboot - and throughout its 115-minute runtime, it manages to feel like both a pure slog and a chaotic, frantic sprint.
The first act provides a molasses-slow reintroduction to Afterlife's principal characters, and it's a long time before the central threat is in any way crystallised.
During this time we're inundated with excessive characters and side-stories to pad out the runtime, all while the heroes do curiously little actual ghostbusting.
Furthermore, despite the film's title, it isn't until the final 20-or-so minutes that New York City actually gets iced-over by Garraka, at which point the movie races through the very concept it was marketed on.
Parts of Frozen Empire are sluggish to the point of exhaustion, while others are tiring through their expedience, all of it adding up to a strangely empty experience.