Longtime fans of the franchise have been waiting 32 years to see it, so expectations are very high heading into Friday’s release of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the hybrid of sequel and reboot that doubles down on nostalgia to deliver the movie people have been asking of the supernatural comedy series since Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters II.
In the interim, Bridesmaids and The Heat‘s Paul Feige delivered a reboot that set the internet ablaze, resulting in one of the most contentious, polarizing and divisive blockbusters of the last decade. Now that the Afterlife reviews have started rolling in, you’d best brace yourself for a furious backlash about how the critics have got it all wrong.
At the time of writing, Ghostbusters: Afterlife currently holds a 68% score on Rotten Tomatoes after almost 80 outlets weighed in with their opinion. However, that’s lower than the 74% rating accrued by Feige’s female-driven adventure, which ended up being Certified Fresh after 390 critics were polled.
Of course, audiences deemed the last stab at the property worthy of just a 49% user rating, but it’s going to lead to all sorts of hot takes and toxic fandom if Ghostbusters: Afterlife ends up suffering from a worse response than the movie the fanbase so vociferously rejected just five short years ago.