Ghost Busters was a long time ago.

Former cast members of the 1984 original have cameos in the 2016 reboot. Bill Murray, Annie Potts, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson all appear. So they put in a new cast this year. It works.

Does anyone believe in ghosts anymore?

Haunted houses, specters, and visions floating through space were material for children’s books. Ghosts were described in fictional terms. No one really believed preternatural apparitions actually existed as the books put it.

Therefore, Ghostbusters (2016, USA) can’t be taken too seriously.  And I had to ask if there are better things to do for Ghostbuster’s heroines than busting ghosts.

Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) wants to prove that ghosts exist. She’s hooked up to find ghosts, but is she barking up the wrong tree? Nothing happens. There aren’t ghosts. It’s a pipe-dream for curiosity seekers. All is quiet on the western front.

This odd-job of ghost hunting may be a cross-over skill, or perhaps a unique one, but investigating the paranormal is too far-fetched. Abby, this would-be ghost hunter and her associate Jillian (Kate McKinnon), shouldn’t be surprised if it is all quiet on the job. I could think of better things to do.

When she began ghost hunting, Abby was curious about what is out there in terms of ghosts. Abby says ghost hunting is better than getting drunk in college. Everyone else was getting smashed, but she was hunting for ghosts with her friends, perhaps thinking she was serving society, as well as satisfying her curiosity.

It has been a large waste of time.

Then Abby’s friend Erin (Kristen Wiig) tells her about a haunted house. And there are disturbances around town. Then there’s the proof and this odd-job turns into a mission when it turns bad out there. As it’s called: “apocalyptic” mayhem.

Ghostly

The ghostly visual spectacular on show in Ghostbusters is purely imaginative and a wonderful stroke of visual effects skillfulness, but the ghostbusters are about salvaging the day from all the bad stuff. We like that. We’re rooting for the heroines battling less than friendly ghosts. Abby goes from ghost hunter to seeing ghosts for what they are worth. Now, she’s a ghostbuster.

Ghotsbusters seduces by drawing you into the theme of ridding the town from all the rotten things in life. There’s a grand sense of doing away with what is terrorizing New York. So when the finale comes, we know whose side we are on. Let life come out on top.

But let’s be honest. How did they go from practically zero ghosts to an apocalypse? That’s a “larger-then-life” jump, but come to think about it, life surprises us like that.

Ghostbusters was released on DVD October 11, 2016.