With a winning cast led by McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, and Paul Rudd, this movie has all the charm you’d expect and some great callbacks to the original films. When Egon dies suddenly after spending years alone on an Oklahoma dirt farm, his estranged daughter Callie (Carrie Coon) takes her two kids (Grace and Wolfhard) to pick up the pieces of her father’s exiled life. With some funny side characters and a score that lifts heavily from the original Ghostbusters, you can’t help but get in the mood and want to see where this story goes.  

Viewed on Kaleidescape, the 2.39:1 HDR10 presentation, sourced from a 4K digital intermediate, is first-rate and sure to be a demo playing on loop at a showroom near you.  If you need something to show your friends, fire this movie up. It has everything a modern blockbuster should have and then some, with some truly dynamic imagery. Small specular details constantly leap off the screen. Black levels are rich, colors pop, and the detail levels are sharp. 

Sony continues to impress in both its remasters (like A Few Good Men, Lawerence of Arabia, and The Karate Kid) and its current prints like Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Detail levels are both natural and absurd. Each time the movie shows Egon’s old property, the field details are fantastic and the coloring is incredible with no visible gradients in any big-sky imagery and the propensity to nearly blind with bright, sunny skies. The VFX work on the proton packs jumps off the screen with rare vibrance and color. Viewed on my Sony Z8H LED TV, Afterlife ranks as one of the best HDR presentations I’ve yet to see.  

One of the Top 5 Dolby Atmos presentations I’ve ever come across, this mix is one for the ages.  It belongs in the same company as Blade Runner 2049, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Gravity, mostly due to the incredible bass dynamics at play. The power and ferocity with which the bass strikes in awesome to behold. 

You just need to watch the opening credits to hear a lot of what this track has to offer, like the shocking bass and detailed Atmos movements in the overhead channels. As Phoebe (Grace) fires up the proton pack for the first time in Chapter 7, the detailed bottom end that accompanies it is both heard and felt. This bass isn’t one-note but sumptuous and powerful throughout the bottom octaves. 

Rob Simonsen’s score is essentially a Cliffs Notes version of Elmer Bernstein’s original Ghostbusters score but this comforts more than annoys me. (I’m probably alone here.) The music is as dynamic as the rest of the soundtrack and explodes in the sequences it’s called upon for. The atmospheric effects are both nuanced and overwhelming.  From Phoebe tinkering in Egon’s lost lab where lights move gently overhead to the massive Third Act sequence that lights up all channels at levels sure to threaten lesser systems—the bass energy alone nearly cracked my home’s foundation—a lot of love and creativity went into this mix. It’s my current go-to demo and one that will likely be hard to top.