The world is thrown into chaos when ghosts invade Earth, turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. From empty streets to bustling kitchens, nothing is safe as even marshmallows come alive, walking, talking, and wreaking havoc.

‘SPOILER ALERT’

In the small town called Summerville in Oklahoma, a man named Egon speeds out of a mine after trapping a powerful ghost inside. Unfortunately, another one escapes and starts chasing Egon’s car. After a while, it knocks down the car, and even though he’s hurt, Egon still walks to his house.

He then activates a big ghost trap outside his house and waits for the ghost to walk into it. Just as the ghost walks toward the house, Egon sets off the trap, but it doesn’t work due to a power failure. Seeing as there’s nothing else he can do, Egon goes into his house and sits in the living room while holding a device that can detect the presence of ghosts.

After the ghost enters the house, Egon tries to use the device to hurt it, but before he can do anything, he gets killed. The ghost then leaves the house, and Egon lies lifeless on the chair while the ghost detector continues beeping on the floor. A few days later, a woman named Callie hears her landlord knocking on her door.

As she opens it, she says she was just going to leave the house to get the money for his rent, and he asks if she won the lottery. Callie says her dad just died, and he left something for her. Her landlord feels sorry for her, but she says he doesn’t have to worry about her because she doesn’t really care about her dad, and she’s surprised he left her with something.

It then turns out that Egon is Callie’s father, who abandoned her when she was little and went to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Callie has been having financial struggles for a while, and since she can’t pay her rent, her landlord says he’ll have to send her out. Callie begs for at least one more week to get the money, but the landlord seems to have had enough, and he says he’ll change the locks when she leaves the house.

Callie is unhappy about this, but since she knows that her dad left her a house on the farm, she heads over to Summerville with her kids, Trevor and Phoebe. As they get to the entrance of Egon’s farm, they look surprised to see some strange verses written on some broken slates. After they reach the house, Callie and her kids look shocked because the place looks really old and abandoned.

Callie also doesn’t find a key under the foot mat, so she tells Phoebe to use her smart talents to unlock the door. After they enter the house, Phoebe sees some numbers on the wall, and Callie notices that rats have eaten some part of the chair in the living room. Trevor also comes in and says he saw a lot of junk stuff in the backyard. As he looks around, he says he can’t believe the house is worse than expected. Suddenly, the ground starts vibrating, and Callie quickly gets the kids to hide under the table.

After the trembling stops, Callie and the kids wonder if it was an earthquake, and Trevor says it’s good that they’re just staying for a week. Callie sounds surprised to hear this, and she says they’ll be living in the house for a long time. Trevor doesn’t like this, but Callie says it’s the only option they have. As they leave the table, Phoebe sees the ghost detector under the chair and goes to pick it up. Trevor then asks what it is, but she says she doesn’t know.

Just then, a lady named Janine arrives at the house and says she was the one who called Callie about her father. She says she was Egon’s friend, and that she helped make sure he paid bills on time. Callie asks if she was like a money manager, but Janine says there was no money to manage.

Callie looks surprised and asks if Egon left her anything, and Janine says he had a lot of debt. A while later, Callie takes her kids out to get something to eat. As they get to the parking lot, Trevor sees a waitress named Lucky and immediately heads down to write an application to work at the restaurant so he can be closer to her. After he drops his application, he returns to his mom’s car, and they head home. When they get there, Phoebe notices some chess pieces on the floor and arranges them back on the board.

Meanwhile, Trevor heads out to see if he can get cell service on his phone. As he walks around the house, he comes across a garage with a car that has been covered. Before he opens it, his phone’s light mysteriously gets turned off, and he walks back into the house. The next morning, Phoebe wakes up and sees that one of the chess pieces has been moved. This surprises her, but as Callie calls her to get ready for school, she moves an opposite piece before heading out.

After they all leave the house, Callie drops Trevor off at the restaurant, and she takes Phoebe to her new school. As they get there, Phoebe doesn’t look happy that she’s going to a public school, but Callie tells her that it won’t be as bad as she thinks. After Phoebe walks into the school, Callie stands at the entrance, and a teacher named Grooberson meets her there.

He then introduces himself as a teacher, and as Callie asks about the school, Grooberson jokes that many of the kids that come there are not very bright. Shortly after, Grooberson goes to his class and plays a video for students to watch while he goes into his office to focus on other things. Just then, a boy named Podcast brings out his microphone and asks if Phoebe is in town to run away from something.

Phoebe says she’s actually around because her grandfather died, and Podcast asks if she wants to uncover the reason for this death. Phoebe says it was due to natural causes because she heard that Egon died of a heart attack. After this, she introduces herself to him, and he also tells her his name.

She then asks why his name is Podcast, and he says it’s because he has a podcast. A while later, the ground starts trembling again, and Phoebe goes into Grooberson’s office when she sees a seismic map. Grooberson can’t believe she knows what the map is, and he says he’s a seismologist.

As Phoebe still looks at the map, Grooberson explains that the vibrations in Summerville have similar patterns to an explosion as opposed to the common belief that it’s an earthquake. He adds that he doesn’t understand how a place that isn’t near a tectonic plate will experience vibrations on a daily basis. Phoebe then jokes that it might be an early sign of the apocalypse.

A while later, Phoebe leaves school with Podcast, and he continues interviewing her. As he then talks about a haunted movie theater in the town, Phoebe says she doesn’t believe in ghosts, and Podcast sounds shocked to hear this. He then says there’s something he needs to show her. Following this, he takes her to the old mine in the town that has been closed for many years. Podcast says that the entire town was a mining operation in the past, and things were going quite well for the miners until they started leaping down the mine shaft to their death.

He says it was called the Shandorian curse, and Phoebe sees a giant wall with some carvings on it. She then asks Podcast who built it, and he says that according to old stories, the wall just showed up one day without any explanation. After a while, Phoebe and Podcast leave the mine and head to their respective homes.

Later that night, after Phoebe brushes her teeth, she sees that one of the chess pieces has moved again. As she moves one from the opposite side, an invisible creature moves another piece. Phoebe is shocked by this, but she still decides to take her turn. Surprisingly, the ghost seems to be tired of the game, and it knocks off one of her pieces. The ghost detector then starts making a strange sound, and as Phoebe holds it, the ghost in the room takes her to the living room and forces her to sit on Egon’s chair.

The ghost also directs her to open a small safe on the floor, and as she does so, she finds a ghost trap. The next day, Phoebe takes the device to school and shows it to Podcast. As they wonder what it is, Grooberson sees it and looks surprised. He then asks where they managed to get a replica of a ghost trap. Phoebe and Podcast sound confused to hear this, but Grooberson mentions that it used to be a big deal in New York many years ago.

As he lifts it up, something nearly escapes from the trap, and Grooberson looks shocked while asking if it’s real. Phoebe doesn’t know because she just saw it in her grandfather’s house, and as she asks what happened in New York, Grooberson shows her and Podcast a video of some physicists called the Ghostbusters, who showed up with portable proton accelerators to blow off the roof of a building to get rid of ghosts who were about to invade earth. Grooberson asks if they’ve never heard of it, but the kids look extremely confused because it’s their first time hearing about what happened.

Grooberson then checks the device again, and as he wonders if it’s still working, Podcast suggests testing it. After this, the kids follow Grooberson to an open space where they try to open the ghost trap. Despite doing everything correctly, the device doesn’t seem to work, but as Grooberson taps it, a ghost suddenly escapes and heads straight into the mine.

Podcast is excited by this, and he tells Phoebe that since the ghost trap worked, it’s quite obvious that her grandfather was a ghostbuster. Phoebe says she now knows it too, but Grooberson eventually suggests leaving the area. When they get to Phoebe’s house, Podcast looks around and finds a strange whistle.

Grooberson says it’s a death whistle used to ward off evil spirits, and that it has a horrible sound. Podcast still blows it, and Callie comes out to the living room to see what’s happening. Podcast then asks if he can keep the whistle, and she says he can. Callie then thanks Grooberson for bringing her daughter home, and he jokes that he just wanted to see what’s inside Egon’s old house. They both seem attracted to each other, and Callie invites him for dinner. Podcast and Phoebe notice that they like each other, but they don’t say anything.

After a while, Podcast finds a book in which he sees the picture of the creature they let out when they opened the ghost trap. As Podcast then reads the book, he sees that it’s about a shadowy realm within the earth where the souls of the dead are ruled by a king named Gozer, and protected by a powerful Gatekeeper and Keymaster. According to the book, Gozer will rise and walk the earth again when the Gatekeeper and Keymaster assume the form of beasts.

This sounds scary to Phoebe, and she looks worried about what they released. Elsewhere, Lucky tells Trevor that she and the other workers are going to the mountains to have some fun after their shift. Trevor sounds interested in this, and he follows them.

After they get there, Lucky and Trevor sit just above a pit to talk about their families. They seem to have a lot in common, and they already like each other too. Suddenly, their seats start vibrating, and as they stand up and look into the pit, they hear someone calling the name Gozer. Trevor and Lucky are shocked by this, and as they wonder what’s going on, a ghost flies out of the pit and leaves the scene. Even though this is strange, the kids just laugh it off because they don’t know what really happened.

Back at the house, Grooberson sees a strange map of Summerville while going through some of Egon’s stuff. He then tells Callie that the map is weird because it is written in a strange language that’s likely from thousands of years ago, even though Summerville is only about a hundred years old. Meanwhile, Phoebe holds the ghost detector again, and it leads her to a shed outside the house.

After she goes inside, it also leads her into an underground lab that belongs to Egon. As she looks around, she sees a locker with one of Egon’s ghostbuster jackets. It then turns out that Egon’s ghost is the one who has actually led Phoebe down to his lab because he wants her to fix his proton pack.

Even though he doesn’t appear to her, Egon shows Phoebe the proton pack and teaches her what to do to fix it. After she’s through, Phoebe heads to her room and watches a video of the Ghostbusters. In the video, three of the men who made up the Ghostbusters talk about how they can help people handle their ghost problems.

Phoebe doesn’t really pay attention to this, and she just writes down their number. The next day, Phoebe takes the proton pack to meet Podcast at a junkyard where she plans to test it. After Podcast sets up some bottles as targets for Phoebe, she powers up the proton pack and destroys the bottles and the platform they’ve been placed on.

Podcast looks excited about this, and as he says he wants to try it too, they hear a strange sound coming from an abandoned factory. After going inside, they see a ghost called Muncher, and even though Phoebe suggests laying low, Podcast blows the death whistle. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do anything to the muncher, but before it escapes, Phoebe uses the proton pack to catch it.

As she then tells Podcast to lay down the ghost trap, he does just this, but the muncher eventually escapes. Elsewhere, Trevor tries to fix Egon’s old Cadillac in the garage, but as he tries to turn it on, it doesn’t work. Surprisingly, Egon’s ghost does something to the engine, and as it comes on, he closes the bonnet. Trevor looks shocked because he can’t see anyone, but he just drives away to test-run the car. After a while, he eventually sees Podcast and Phoebe on the road, and he stops next to them.

Podcast then says that they need a ride, and Trevor tells them to enter the car. As he’s driving, he asks what’s going on, and Phoebe tells him about what happened in New York, and how some physicists saved the world from a ghost invasion. Trevor says he has heard the story before, and Phoebe tells him that their grandfather was part of the Ghostbusters.

As he looks shocked, they hear a dispatcher on the radio calling on all units to head to a location to check out a creature that was seen eating some parts of someone’s truck. Phoebe and Podcast realize that it’s Muncher, so they tell Trevor to head over there. As they get to the town, they see Muncher trying to eat a fire hydrant.

While planning what to do, Podcast unknowingly kicks a lever, and it reveals a gunner seat in the car. Phoebe is already sitting there, and as Muncher sees her, he opens the hydrant and runs away. Trevor immediately follows the creature, and Phoebe also tries to bring it down with the proton pack.

Unfortunately, she ends up destroying some parts of the town, and Muncher still escapes and heads for the mountain. Before it gets there, Trevor chases it down, and the kids work together to finally get Muncher trapped. Following this, they leave the car and celebrate their success. As Trevor then looks around, he sees the mountain he came to the previous day and tells Phoebe that he has been there before. A while later, Trevor drives them back home, but on the way, he’s stopped by a cop.

Since he doesn’t have a driver’s license, they’re taken into police custody. While they’re in a holding cell, Trevor tells them about what happened on the mountain, and Lucky, who happens to be in another cell, says he’s telling the truth. Trevor looks shocked to see her in a cell, but he eventually realizes that her dad is the police chief, and she only goes inside there to mess around with the inmates.

As her dad also calls her out, Phoebe sees him and asks if they won’t be allowed to make a phone call. The police chief asks who she wants to call, but she doesn’t say anything. When she’s then given a phone, she calls the Ghostbusters number. One of them, Ray, answers the phone, but he says his shop is closed for the day. Phoebe then says she’s calling about Egon, but Ray says he doesn’t care.

Phoebe sounds surprised and asks if they weren’t friends, but Ray says it was a long time ago. As she asks what happened to the Ghostbusters, Ray says that even though things went well for them at the beginning of their journey, they eventually struggled to make a living, and that’s why he and his colleagues, Peter and Winston, decided to do other things. Phoebe asks about Egon, and Ray says he was one of the reasons they stopped getting customers because he kept telling people that their ghost problems weren’t a big deal because the world was coming to an end.

He adds that when they didn’t listen to him, Egon left with their Cadillac and other tools they used to catch ghosts. Phoebe asks if he ever thought Egon had a reason, and Ray says he actually called him years ago to tell him that he was staying in a small town in Oklahoma. He adds that Egon kept talking about a rising storm and a huge psychic tornado that was going to consume humanity forever.

Ray says it was hard to believe, but Phoebe mentions that there’s actually a mountain with ancient carvings in Summerville. Ray doesn’t seem to care about this, and he tells Phoebe to stop chasing ghosts. As Phoebe says she’s Egon’s granddaughter, the police chief ends the call, and she looks disappointed.

Shortly after, Callie and Grooberson arrive at the police station to bail the kids. Callie says that her kids aren’t criminals, but the police chief mentions that Trevor drove without a license, and Phoebe destroyed parts of the town with her strange device. Callie cannot believe this, but Phoebe says they caught a ghost. One of the cops jokes that she’s definitely Egon’s grandkid, and the police chief also says she’s talking like Egon. As he says that the proton pack will be seized and kept in the impound locker, Phoebe gets pissed and nearly attacks him with it, but Callie stops her and says she needs to forget about it.

After they get home, Callie scolds Phoebe for what she did. Phoebe then asks if Callie has ever thought that her dad had a reason for coming to the farm. Callie says she doesn’t care because he abandoned her, but Phoebe still asks why her mom didn’t bother to tell her about her grandfather and how he loved science just like her. Callie says it doesn’t matter because she didn’t mean anything to her father.

She adds that he left her alone, and it just shows how bad of a father he is. Elsewhere, the walls inside the mine start cracking, and a monster escapes from it. Shortly after, Grooberson heads to a supermarket to get some things.

Surprisingly, he sees some marshmallows turn into living creatures, and as he wonders what’s happening, he sees a monster named Vinz, who is actually the Keymaster of the ghost realm. Even though Grooberson manages to run away from the store and enter his car, Vinz still catches him and possesses him. The next day, Phoebe, Podcast, Trevor, and Lucky meet at a restaurant to talk about Egon’s map.

Podcast then says he found some things about Gozer that show that the creature is a deity of evil who once lived on earth and wants to come back. Phoebe then asks if the name Shandor means anything to Lucky, and she says it’s the name of the man who built the town. Phoebe says he’s also the one who owned the New York building that the Ghostbusters had to blow its roof to keep the ghosts from invading earth.

As Trevor asks what exactly is happening in Summerville, Phoebe says there’s only one way to find out. Following this, they all head down the pit in the mountain. As they look around, they see a sacrificial death pit and also realize they’re in a temple with tombs around. Interestingly, only Shandor’s body is inside, and as Phoebe looks at the numbers on the wall, she realizes that they’re actually the different years that something bad happened in the world. Unfortunately, the present year 2021 is on the wall, and Phoebe discovers that the numbers are related to a prophecy about the end of the world.

Almost immediately, they all start hearing a strange sound coming from the death pit. It then turns out that Gozer is about to escape, but Egon has already set up automated proton cannons to shoot her down so she never escapes from her prison. The kids also figure out that the cannons are what’s causing the earthquakes.

Surprisingly, Shandor opens his eyes as this is happening, but he eventually closes it after the trembling stops. Phoebe then mentions that Egon actually left everything behind just to protect the world and prevent the prophecy from happening. Since Callie has always believed that her dad never loved her, Phoebe says they must tell her mom everything.

Meanwhile, Callie sees the ghost detector, and as she picks it up, it leads her to Egon’s lab. There, she sees a wall with pictures of her at different ages, and she realizes that her dad never forgot about her. Suddenly, Gozer’s Gatekeeper, Zuul, enters the lab and possesses Callie. When the kids get home, they see that she’s already possessed and asking for the Keymaster. Suddenly, the ground starts vibrating again, but this time, Vinz has already led Grooberson to the temple to destroy Egon’s cannons so that Gozer can finally be free.

As Zuul feels this, she leads Callie out of the house to find Grooberson. The kids run outside to see what’s happening, and as Phoebe looks around, she discovers that Egon’s farm is actually an elaborate ghost trap. The kids then go to Egon’s lab to look at the farm’s blueprint and how they can activate the traps. After this, they head to the police department to take the Cadillac and the other devices that were seized. Since there’s no other way to get the devices out of the impound locker, Podcast releases Muncher, and the creature chews through the bars to escape.

The kids then take the devices and join Trevor in the Cadillac while Lucky drives a cop car to another location as part of their plan to stop Gozer. After a while, Phoebe and Podcast reach the mountain and see Callie and Grooberson turning into monsters. This gets Gozer released, and other monsters also escape into the world. Shandor appears to already be alive again, and as he welcomes Gozer back on Earth, she tears his body apart. As she then comes outside, Phoebe appears before her to distract her with a joke.

Gozer asks if she’s there to sacrifice herself, but Phoebe says she’s still too young for that. Since Gozer needs both the Gatekeeper and Keymaster to be alive to fully regain her strength, Podcast slides the ghost trap under Zuul. As the monster gets trapped, Callie is freed, and she falls down some stairs.

Gozer’s body partially gets destroyed, but before she attacks them, Phoebe quickly takes her mom into the Cadillac, and they leave with Podcast and Trevor. Inside the car, Callie doesn’t understand what’s happening, and Phoebe explains how they just saved her and partially weakened Gozer. Callie then mentions that she saw her dad’s lab, and it seems he was tracking her life even though she thought he abandoned her.

Phoebe says she already knows, and as she sees Vinz heading for their car, she activates the gunner seat and shoots the proton pack at him. Callie is shocked by this, but Phoebe tells her not to worry because she’s a scientist. As they get home, Trevor parks the car near the farm while Phoebe and Callie head to the front of the house. Just then, Gozer heads for the house, and Phoebe holds the ghost trap while waiting for the monster to come closer. As she keeps moving forward, Lucky comes out of the house holding a proton pack and shoots Gozer.

Trevor also tries to shoot another one from inside the car, but it doesn’t work. As he wonders what’s wrong, Podcast sees the living marshmallows eating the wires, and he looks shocked. Meanwhile, Phoebe tells Callie to step on a pedal to activate the trap on the farm.

As she does this, the power fails again, and Gozer drags Lucky into the field. Phoebe and Callie immediately try to save her, but Gozer snatches the ghost trap and releases Zuul into Lucky. As the Gatekeeper and Keymaster are again by her side, Gozer regains her full strength.

Phoebe and Callie look scared because she’s now heading for them, but before she does anything, Ray, Peter, and Winston show up at the scene and ask if the monster remembers them. Phoebe and Callie look relieved, and Gozer asks if the Ghostbusters are gods. They joke that they are, and they shoot her with their proton packs.

Their streams form up as one, but Gozer breaks them apart and appears to be too powerful for them. After throwing them against a car, Gozer walks toward them to kill them. Before she does so, Phoebe grabs a proton pack and shoots Gozer. Surprisingly, Gozer nearly frees herself, but Egon’s ghost shows up and holds onto the proton pack to help Phoebe. Everyone is shocked by this, but the other Ghostbusters eventually recharge their proton packs and shoot Gozer too.

Podcast finally manages to get rid of the marshmallows, and Trevor is able to use his proton pack to recharge the elaborate ghost trap on the farm. As Callie notices that the traps are getting activated, she steps on the pedal. Following this, Gozer finally gets trapped along with all the other monsters who had escaped earlier.

The Ghostbusters are relieved by this, and they thank Egon for helping them. Ray also says he’s sorry he didn’t believe his friend. Just then, Peter thanks Phoebe for pitching in, and as he asks who Callie is, she proudly says she’s Egon’s daughter.

Following this, Trevor breaks the monster statues Grooberson and Lucky have been trapped in. They look happy to be alive again, and Egon also meets his grandchildren formally. Callie also sees her dad, and after she hugs him, he disappears.

While it always seemed like Egon abandoned his family for no reason, it eventually turned out that he did it to focus on saving the world. Callie also realized that he wasn’t a bad father afterall, and that he kept track of her life despite not being close to her. Even though this shows that love and care can sometimes be expressed in ways that might not be easily understood, do you think Egon could’ve handled it better?

Ghostbusters – Afterlife 2021 .