Ghostbusters Review: 6 Ups And 4 Downs

2. Stilted, Flat Blocking

I don't meant to condescend, but dialogue scenes don’t just need to be dialogue – you can have movement and sight gags and all sorts of things to better tell your story. Ghostbusters has some of this stuff - gags especially - but it fails on a basic blocking level.

So many scenes, especially the expository ones in the first half, are incredibly poorly blocked. You have these big, interesting sets, but the actors just stand on the spot in very rigid formations with the camera filming them straight on or at right angles. It’s very unengaging scene construction that makes things feel more stilted than they need to and puts full focus on the script, meaning that when that does flub, it's more noticeable.

I'd wager this is a repercussion of the high amount of improvisation in the film. The actors can ad-lib all they want, as long as they stay in the same spot so the cinematographer doesn’t have to improv too. But this isn’t any of these guys first time in this sort of film – they could have really done something more exciting.