Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Trailer #3 (International) Review

In late July 2021 we were gifted the second trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which came one year and seven months after the first trailer. I thought the second trailer would be the final trailer, so it came as a complete surprise that a third trailer was just released for International markets. Let's have a look at it, shall we...

The trailer is embedded below, so feel free to watch it before reading on. Click on all framegrabs for the original images. Furthermore, THIS ARTICLE IS VERY IMAGE-INTENSIVE.


The trailer starts with an old, bespectacled, white-bearded man driving what looks to be a Shandor Mines worktruck, with a loaded ghost trap sitting in the passenger seat. Some invisible force hits the driver's side door, putting a massive dent in it, and causing the truck to swerve off the road and into a cornfield.


After a cut to the Sony / Columbia Pictures / Bron logos, we see Callie and her kids driving up to the old farmhouse. The place is fortified with a fence on which someone painted the message, "This Is How It Ends". I guess Teddy Maddox lived here before Egon.


Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) sits in her bedroom and asks her mom, "What kind of scientist was grandpa?" As mother Callie (Carrie Coon) says that she has no idea, we see more night time footage of that old man limping up to the farmhouse carrying the loaded ghost trap, while still being pursued by the invisible force. He hides the trap under the floorboards of the house. As if there was any doubt before, seeing this, we know that this old man is DEFINITELY Egon Spengler. Obviously, they hired a body double for the part, though I have to wonder if they'll use any of that very convincing CGI that brought Peter Cushing back from the dead to appear in Star Wars: Rogue One to graft Harold Ramis' face onto this body double.


After the shot of Egon putting the trap under the floor, the trailer immediately cuts to a shot from the same angle of Phoebe peeking into the same hole and taking the trap out. That's a nice way to connect the two. We hear her tell someone (probably Mr. Grooberson in the classroom) that she "found this in my living room".


Meanwhile, in the barn, Trevor lifts the tarp to find... a Tardis! This movie is a wacky British time travel adventure! Nah, you know that it's the Ecto-1 under there. Back in the classroom, Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) lifts up the ghost trap that emits a green glow. He drops it on the table in front of Phoebe and her Asian classmate (played by Logan Kim) with the dumb name: Podcast. There, I said it. It shall not be said again. I sincerely hope that his REAL name is revealed in the movie so I can refer to him by a name other than one that would make even Paul Feig say, "That's stupid."


Up pops the text "From Director Jason Reitman" over a shot of Summerville's main street. More shots of residents as we, yet again, hear Grooby Baby intone, "Somehow, a town that has no fault lines, is shaking on a daily basis." Yes, the dialog is actually longer, as previously he also mentioned "no fracking". Over at the mine shaft, Trevor is making goo-goo eyes with Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) - can't say I blame him, she's cute - and they look down the shaft to see something glowing down there. Some orange spectral energy shoots out, which is something we've seen in the last trailer. It is followed by a, possibly unrelated, shot of red-ish beams shooting towards an archeological dig of some sort. Gozer's Temple, perhaps? Then we hear Phoebe's reply to the "no fault lines" line, "Maybe it's the apocalypse." We heard her say that in the last trailer, too, and I still love Mckenna Grace's delivery of it.


Back to the mine shaft we go, only now Phoebe and Audio Boy (no relation to Astro Boy) are sitting with Trevor and Lucky in an elevator going down the shaft. The elevator car comes to an abrupt stop, causing Trevor to shine his flashlight on the fixtures below. We see a Terror Dog statue. As the car lowers more, we see that it's a shrine to Gozer. (We saw this in the last International trailer, too.) Phoebe has figured out that "this isn't a mine; it's a gateway". I'm pretty sure we all guessed that already, but thank you Egon Junior, for the confirmation. I think I know who this film's "exposition giver" is going to be :-)


Now we're in Walmart with The Notorious G-R-O-O-B as he sees a Mini-Puft emerge from a bag of marshmallows... and promptly fall on its face! More Mini-Pufts hit his foot with a Roomba.


In what may be my favorite sick-and-twisted Mini-Puft antic, a bunch have gathered around a blender. Two are outside by the buttons, while one is inside. Care to guess what happens? What makes the gag work for me, is one little bit at the very end when the blended Puft's face sticks to the side of the blender.


Ecto-1 rounds a corner in front of a Stay Puft Marshmallows billboard, which has already been posterized. Phoebe and the two boys are inside. She points to Muncher living up to his name on a fire hydrant. Before they can figure out what to do, the gunner seat pops out with Phoebe strapped in and ready to bust.


We saw this same shot in the first trailer, only Muncher was NOT in it. The fire hydrant was sitting peacefully in the background, with us viewers unaware that it would have any sort of significance.


As this is all taking place, a new instrumental version of the Ray Parker Jr. tune kicks in. I have been told that there will NOT be a soundtrack album, but the film WILL get a score album! The trailer proceeds to give us a little bit of the Muncher chase scene. Muncher flies off, causing the hydrant to gush water. Phoebe excitedly tells Trevor to follow it.


The car rounds the corner in front of the Summerville Post Office, with the Remote Trap Vehicle (RTV) notable absent from the shot. It was included in the same shot in the second trailer, but not in the first trailer. I suspect that it WILL be in the shot in the movie. The reason why I think it was, yet again, removed from this trailer shot is because shortly thereafter, the trailer NOW shows the RTV being dropped from its compartment in the Ecto-1. Even though the trailer is, clearly, jumping all over the place in regards to the order scenes take place in the movie, it is trying to maintain some continuity for this little mini-scene. We get a nice ground-level close-up of the RTV leading the Ecto-1.


We also get a shot of Muncher firing metal balls back at those meddling kids. Good for you, Muncher. You stand up to those bullies. They had no right to interrupt your healthy hydrant lunch. The "bullets" cause Trevor to skid on the road, which makes a whole lotta sparks emerge from the Ectomobile.


It also causes Phoebe to loose control of her Neutrona Wand. I must point out here that the footage we see of Muncher narrowly escaping the proton streams by flying over the sidewalk has been altered since we first saw it back in December 2019 in the first trailer. Here is the shot in the third trailer:


Now here below is the EXACT SAME FRAME in the first trailer. Notice that Muncher was closer to the camera. Also, "Empress" was NOT erased from the vertical sign (to the right of middle), the stream was purple-ish, and the overall color grading was a little bit different.


After the car screeches to a halt outside Spinners (the car hop/restaurant where everyone hangs out, apparently), "This Year" pops on screen. So, no more delays, then? Thank Goddess! It's followed by the shot of spectral energy flying across Summerville from the mountaintop. At Spinner's, Trevor asks Phoebe, "What exactly is happening here?" Before she can answer him, we're back at the Gozer Shrine in the mines. It would seem that someone has set up four Proton Packs around the "gateway" hole, and they all fire and "cross streams" inside.


Perhaps this was Egon's way of closing the gateway by himself. As we see Phoebe and the Asian grandson Ray never knew that he had, she tells Trevor (presumably) in voiceover, "We must finish what our grandfather started." Well, if you must, you must. Personally, I would leave it to people with more experience in the matter. Although in their early 40s by now, I'm sure Eduardo, Kylie, Roland, and Garrett would still be capable of doing the job.


Main street breaks up, as we saw in the last trailer. Ecto-1 just drove across a bridge, which we did not see in the last trailer. This trailer has 100% MORE Ecto-1 than either of the previous two trailers. "Uncover The Past" pops on screen. (UPDATE: This Ecto-1 bridge shot was flipped. In the final film, it appears properly with the signs on the right correctly being on the left.)


A better look at the Sentinel Terror Dog statue at the shrine.


Followed by the spectral Sentinel Terror Dog looming over Groob! It zips between a couple of school buses. Now we finally know what that was between the buses in the first trailer. Groobs, wearing the cutest little shorts, says to the only two students that spend quality time with him, "That's not good." No shit.


"Protect The Future" appears. The trailer is starting to get really serious. Just as I say that, a storm brews over the old farmhouse.


Trevor and Callie - wearing a magnificent shiny coordination - both look on in utter shock. The outfit reminds me of what possessed Dana Barrett wore.


Cut to a shot of Gozer - or something that looks similar to her - coming out of the gateway at the shrine. We saw it in the last trailer. What we didn't see were shots of the Terror Dog rampaging down the street. This third trailer is happy to oblige. It's chasing after the RTV, making a mess of main street in the process.


We can never have enough of the cute little pooch, so the trailer gives us Groobs meeting the hell hound in Walmart. I wonder what aisle you can find Terror Dogs in. Oh, yeah, that's right. Numskull's pin set tells us he's in aisle six.


The Ecto-1, a car made over 60 years ago, which has sat rusting in a barn for the last decade, can now jump in the air. Who knew the Ecto-1 was cousins with the General Lee? The trailer ends with the film title, the writer and director credits, and the release date.


I have to say, this may be the best trailer yet. It's definitely the most action-packed. Currently, there is no third Domestic trailer, but if there is, it would probably be near-identical to this one. As a reminder, here in the United States, Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes out on Friday November 19th, which is a mere FOUR WEEKS from this Friday.

• VIP-EXCLUSIVE BONUS FEATURE - High-quality 1920x1080 download of the trailer and the full set of 100 framegrabs by Matthew Jordan.