Ghostbusters: Afterlife busted with a PG-13 rating

February 17th 2021, 2:45pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

You know it's a slow news day when we're reporting on a movie receiving a wholly unsurprising rating (as pretty much anything outside of a straight up kid's movie or something purposely and intentionally subversive gets a PG-13 these days), but alas Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters: Afterlife will – of course – get the aforementioned PG-13. Here's what the MPAA had to say as to why:

supernatural action and some suggestive references

Yeah, sounds about right.

Though, it must also be pointed out that the first two Ghostbusters films were in fact rated PG; however, even though the "PG-13" rating was implimented in 1984, the same year as the first Ghostbusters – partly due to the violence of the PG-rated Temple of Doom, and then first officially introduced with Red Dawn, also 1984 – it took a lot more to be given the "PG-13" label back then, regardless. So, it's still likely if the original films were to be released now they would instead be rated PG-13 (especially for all the sex-related humor). But, even so, most big-budget, special effects event films are now usually PG-13, as – again – "PG" gets relegated to being a kid's film (whether unfairly or not), and "R" (theoretically) restricts box-office results due to less people can go see them. So at this point it's what studios are aiming for, rather than being saddled with.

Anyway, Reitman's sequel is set in the same universe as Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II (rather than the overly-maligned and underrated 2016 reboot), and is about:

a new family with single mom Callie (Carrie Coon) and her two kids, Trevor and Phoebe (Finn Wolfhard & Mckenna Grace) who move into a beaten-down farmhouse in Oklahoma only to discover that there’s something strange in the neighborhood. Unexplained quakes shake the town. There’s an old mine nearby that bears the name of Ivo Shandor, who built the Manhattan high-rise in the 1984 film that channeled the forces of evil. Paul Rudd costars as a local teacher who’s been documenting the unexplained phenomena, befriending Callie and her kids, and helping make the connection between the current weirdness and the events of three decades before.

Meanwhile, Ghostbusters: Afterlife – starring Finn Wolfhard, Paul Rudd, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Carrie Coon, Ernie Hudson, and Sigourney Weaver – will be busting up in theaters November 11th (though we'll keep you updated if that eventually changes).