Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails (2015) and the Inspirations that Made It

A story must come from somewhere.  It’s hard to be original when there are so many out there.  Every movie is either a rehash of a story that came before, or a combination of different story elements from different sources to create a Frankenstein’s monster of storylines.  That’s why a movie like Happy Death Day feels like a slasher take on the Groundhog Day story, or why Real Steel feels like Over the Top with robot boxing instead of arm wrestling.  There’s not much in terms of new stories coming out anymore.

Originality comes from how the stories are told.  How are the storylines adapted into new situations?  How do the different elements from different films come together to make a whole?  Is this new version of the story we already know any good?  All these questions are important to think about when crafting a new movie because chances are the actual storyline will be comparable to something that came before.

Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails is interesting to look at because of how it took different elements from different films to make a whole new tale.  Tom Thompson (Milo Parker) went down to his cellar on an errand and found a slimy green ghost named Hugo (Bastian Pastewka).  He contacted Hetty Cuminseed (Ange Engelke), a former government ghosthunter, to get rid of Hugo.  They discovered that Hugo had been displaced from his home by a mean ice ghost, so the three oddballs joined together to stop a force that the government wouldn’t believe was coming.

There were three major inspirations that helped to create Ghotshunters: On Icy Trails.  Kicking things off was the broadest of all inspirations, the basic story.  Before going to the layer where the characters were, the lowest of the layers must be dissected.  That layer would be the conflict.  An evil entity was coming, and the protagonists had to stop it.  That was the most basic monster movie storyline that there could be.  There have been many monster movies over the years that shared the same sort of basic plot thread.  The Godzilla movies frequently had monsters coming to Japan, New York, or whatever other major city was being attacked.  They destroyed buildings, killed people, and left a path of destruction behind them.

Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails had that story thread throughout.  Bringing the characters back in, Hugo had been spending his afterlife at some country manor.  A large ice ghost of some sort came to the manor and forced Hugo to flee.  He went to live in Tom’s cellar until he, Tom, and Hetty teamed up to fight back against the ice ghost.  They warned the people throughout the city about the impending doom, then did whatever they could to fight back against the cold and protect the people around them.  It was a familiar story packaged in a different way.  Maybe Godzilla was the wrong comparison.  It’s kind of like the impending doom of Zuul, and the trio of unlikely teammates were the Ghostbusters, coming together to save the day.

Ghostbusters seemed like the biggest inspiration for Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails.  Not only did the story line up with the “evil thing is coming, let’s team up and stop it” tale that Ghostbusters once wove, but there was a character who felt ripped straight from the 80s comedy classic.  Hugo, the ghost character, looked very familiar.  He was a green, slimy, floating thing without legs.  He looked a lot like a neater, cleaner version of Slimer.  The slime was still there, but he wasn’t the slovenly, unkempt ghost that Slimer was.  Hugo didn’t intentionally slime everyone.  He was friendly.  But his look was definitely inspired by the iconic ghost from the Ghostbusters franchise.

The final inspiration of note was one that couldn’t be traced back to Ghostbusters.  Instead, it came from another team that would fight off threats that wouldn’t normally exist in our world.  Those threats were from out of this world.  Literally.  Men in Black was about a government agency that would protect the Earth from alien threats and serve as a secret border agency for aliens immigrating to Earth.  It mainly followed two agents as they fought a new evil alien.  RIPD would take on similar material, but with ghosts.  Two agents, secret government agency, protecting the world from something that they didn’t know existed.  Though, in the case of RIPD, the agents were dead.

Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails took some inspiration from both, it seems.  Hetty Cuminseed worked for a government agency at the beginning of the film.  The agency was top secret and kept the world safe from ghosts.  She worked with a partner.  They had special weapons to deal with the ghosts.  The biggest difference was that Hetty went rogue.  She was let go from her position and hired by Tom to go after the ice ghost.  She was working against the government that had fired her, doing their job when they wouldn’t do it.  Other than that, the secret arm of the government was very much like that of the other two properties.

Those three inspirations came together to make Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails.  The basic storyline that has been used throughout film history gave it a tale to tell.  Ghostbusters helped to inspire the character who set the story in motion.  And then there was Men in Black, which inspired the government organization that became an essential part of the story.  Each inspiration came together to create something that felt familiar but had a touch of originality at the same time.

It’s rare for any movie to be completely original anymore.  There are so many stories out there that are so easy to find.  It has become almost impossible to tell a story without the influence of something else seeping into it.  Whether it’s the theme or feel, the look or story, the dialogue or the music, a movie will always have familiar moments.  As long as the overall final work is told in an original and interesting way, the elements that are familiar will only heighten the entertainment.

Now for a few notes:

• Godzilla (week 282) was mentioned in this post.
• Have you seen Ghosthunters: On Icy Trails?  What did you think?  What do you think about movies being inspired by others?  Let me know in the comments.
• You can use the comments or Twitter to let me know about movies I should be watching for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  I’m always open to suggestions.
• There’s an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Check it out, why don’t you?
• If you want to follow me on Snapchat (jurassicgriffin), you can.
• The last thing in any post is the preview of what is coming up.  We’re moving onto week 235, so I scheduled a pretty big movie in terms of bad movies I haven’t seen.  Nest week, I’ll be checking out a little movie called From Justin to Kelly.  It was that movie where they took the winner and runner up from the first season of American Idol, paired them on screen, and rolled cameras.  I know it’s bad.  You know it’s bad.  And it will be a part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies in a week.  See you then.