It’s early days yet, but this dreadful movie of mind-numbing noise and bluster has shot into contention, with a bullet, for a leading place among the year’s Joe Cockers. Old-school ghosts, the ones that you rarely ever see other than as creepy, shadowy apparitions – the ones that actually scare you and make you wonder about whether the phenomenon could possibly be true – have been made a thing of the past by splatter-fest CGI. As a new take on the unfathomably highly regarded 1984 original, with women instead of men as the saviours of New York City from dastardly paranormal activity, I certainly didn’t go along expecting anything other than vaporous green monsters causing idiot mayhem. But it is even more brain-dead than its spectral villains are ridiculous – it’s like a ghost story written by Donald Trump instead of Edgar Allen Poe. The gang this time around is Erin (Kristen Wiig), Abby (the cheaply stereotyped Melissa McCarthy), Jillian (Kate McKinnon, in a performance that provokes jaw-grinding irritation) and Patty (Leslie Jones, who, for some reason, has attracted more online ire than director Paul Feig). The girls, as serious believers in ghosts, have to prove themselves in the eyes of the doubters and the government, which is at pains to keep the truth from the public (yawn). Chris Hemsworth as Kevin, their beefcake Aussie secretary, does a you-beaut dumb blonde routine without any memorable lines (the script is slipshod throughout), Ozzy Osbourne gets the briefest of cameos, playing himself at a heavy metal concert, and Bill Murray, in homage to Bill Murray, has seven figures added to his bank account for reciting some lines as a ghost sceptic. You get a few bars of Ray Parker Jr’s classic theme song, but it’s not nearly enough to lift the leadenness. The last twenty minutes are as loud as these sorts of action flicks always are now – I left with a splitting headache – and if you care in the least what happens you’re easily pleased.
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