This isn’t a sequel to the 1984 film. It’s a sequel to spinoff merchandising objects and the coddled memories of kids who were too young to understand that the “Keymaster” and “Gatekeeper” bit was a sex joke. It strip-mines a nostalgia for something that never existed, as calculatedly phony as the ersatz Americana setting, shot in Alberta, Canada. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” treats with pseudo-religious reverence the events of a movie in which a ghost blew Dan Aykroyd in a firehouse.
Fuckin Brutal. Ban all fandoms why do they keep trying to make sequels and shit to a two hour SNL sketch that has never worked outside of that one movie
The bit about the small town being a mix of anachronistic 1950s elements and giant Walmarts is a real thing though, as someone from a town like that. While dense urban areas were buys gentrifying to have fusion restaurants and high-income condos, the rural areas were gentrifying to be like 1950s Main Street. Trying to bring back a time to make all the old people and conservatives feel like they're in an old time small town and not in the corpse of mid-century America.
tbf Realistically speaking Small-town America from like, the 30's to the early 50's is what you wanna aim for with modern small towns anyway, because they were designed without cars in mind so they are places where humans can live.
You can still see it in New England because that place was fully ossified by the time cars showed up. Small towns but you can walk to places and shit, it's cozy
I always loved Lovecraft depictions of old towns from that region