36 years after Beetlejuice was released, director Tim Burton brings back his esoteric and unique brand of weirdness to this sequel.
Images: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
They say you can’t keep a good man down. It turns out that you can’t keep a ghost with questionable morals down, too.
Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), the ‘ghost with the most’, first popped onto screens in 1988’s Beetlejuice. The movie about a young couple who dies and terrorises the new occupants of their house with the help of the titular entity was an unexpected hit. Now, more than 30 years later, Betelgeuse finally returns from the Neitherworld in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to serve up more laughs and scares.
The Deetz family goes back to the town of Winter River, Connecticut, after patriarch Charles Deetz dies in an accident. The surviving Deetz members attend his funeral: Charles’ widow Delia (Catherine O’Hara); his clairvoyant daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), who is now the host of a paranormal investigation TV show she produces with boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux); and Lydia’s estranged daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega).
Astrid discovers a scale model of Winter River in the attic of the Deetz’s house. The model is a portal to the supernatural realm called the Neitherworld, home to trickster demon Betelgeuse, who is summoned by saying his name three times. Betelgeuse, who attempted to marry Lydia in the first movie, makes a chaotic, havoc-wreaking comeback. When Astrid is in danger, Lydia and Betelgeuse must form an uneasy alliance.
Betelgeuse (pronounced — you guessed it — Beetlejuice) is a pop culture mainstay, and the original movie that introduced the character also spawned an animated series and Broadway musical. A sequel movie has been in the works for decades, with multiple screenplays developed, including ones titled Beetlejuice in Love and Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian being written. Writer Seth Grahame-Smith was announced to pen a Beetlejuice sequel in 2011. That project was shelved in 2019 before being resurrected by Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B in 2022. Finally, the pieces were in place for Betelgeuse’s momentous return.
The first Beetlejuice movie was only Tim Burton’s second directorial feature. It was released before the filmmaker went on to establish himself as a unique voice in Hollywood with movies like Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Batman, and Batman Returns.
Over the last decade or so, many fans feel Burton has lost his way, with movies like Dark Shadows, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and Dumbo failing to take off with audiences. Those same fans can heave a sigh of relief: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is widely considered a return to form for the auteur who built his career on all things weird and off-kilter.
“Over the past few years, I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, [I sort] of lost myself,” Burton, who reportedly considered retiring after 2019’s Dumbo, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “For me, I realised the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.”
Burton reunites with leading man Keaton, whom he worked with on four previous movies. Funnily enough, Keaton almost passed on the role all those years ago because he didn’t understand Burton’s pitch but agreed to meet with him again because he liked Burton as a person. “Throughout the years, Tim and I would often go, ‘Would you be interested in doing it all again?’ There were quite a few of those conversations. And one very consistent thing was — not too much technology,” Keaton tells Woman’s Day.
Indeed, a big part of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s charm is its relatively lo-fi approach, using lots of prosthetic makeup effects, practical sets, puppetry, and even stop-motion animation to realise its outlandish and ghoulish imagery. “There was always an agreement that if we ever did [Beetlejuice] again, it had to be handmade … I can’t tell you how much fun it is out of the corner of your eye to see somebody with, like, fishing line pulling something, like a cat’s tail … It’s like being a kid again,” Keaton enthuses.
While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is part of the legacy sequel trend, in which a dormant franchise is revived by pairing its original stars with new blood, it has a freshness to it. Jenna Ortega, one of Gen Z’s biggest rising stars, feels the movie possesses a vital dose of weirdness.
“People need to revisit weird, strange, off-putting stories again,” Ortega, who collaborated with Burton on the Netflix hit series Wednesday, tells Vanity Fair. “We need to introduce the younger generation that’s always on the phone to new artistic and creative ideas,” she adds.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice captures the spirit of the first movie by keeping things anarchic and irreverent, avoiding the pitfalls of legacy sequels that can sometimes be too worshipful of their forebears. Keaton hasn’t missed a beat, and the black comedy, wild character designs, and satisfyingly tactile special effects all feel true to the first movie, making this an enjoyable jaunt back to the Neitherworld.
The Deetz family return home. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia's life is turned upside down when her daughter discovers the model of the town and the portal to the Afterlife is opened.
View Details