In 1988 Tim Burton brought macabre madness into our lives with Beetlejuice. And for all his films that we’ve loved after, Beetlejuice is the name that pops into our minds whenever anyone mentions Tim Burton. Now, 36 years later, we finally get the sequel we’ve all been hoping was going to happen.
So does it work? Well, it does and it doesn’t. If it is a nostalgia ride that you are looking for, look no further, because BeetleJuice Beetlejuice is just as macabre and creepy and just as fun as the original. The fact that most of the old faces return for the film — Michael Keaton, Wynona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara — adds to what works for the film.
In the time lapse between the first and the second film, Ryder’s Lydia Deetz has gone from being a black-wearing, ghost-seeing Goth teen who hates her stepmother (Catherine O’Hara) to a black-wearing, ghost-seeing Goth adult who doesn’t hate her stepmother too much. The bigger difference is that she now has a dead husband (he was eaten by piranhas in the Amazon), a successful show about her ghost-seeing ability, a sullen, resentful teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) who finds her mother’s ghost-seeing business embarrassing, and a sleazy, manipulative producer/boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux).
What brings this motley group to the ‘Ghost House’ in Winter River where the Deetz family was terrorised all those years ago is an unexpected death. Richard Deetz (Lydia’s father) dies in a particularly gruesome animation that shows him surviving a plane crash, surviving drowning and then being eaten by a shark. Astrid — who fits the bill as Lydia’s daughter, with Ortega pulling of the eye-rolling sullen teen version of Ryder brilliantly — who doesn’t believe in the afterlife or ghosts has no idea that the boy she meets is a particularly violent and devious ghost who tricks her into going to the afterlife to meet her father.
In all this, Keaton’s delightfully mad, unpredictable and macabre Beetlejuice keeps popping up everywhere, still trying to get Lydia to marry him. Only this time he has a vengeance-seeking ex-wife Delores in the mix, a role in which Monica Belucci needs to look alluring and hot and nothing more. As usual Keaton’s manic energy and unpredictability just raises the film from okay to absolutely bonkers. And of course nobody does weird the way Ryder does it —- another reason to not miss the film.
Burton jumps into the creepy and macabre right away with both the old (bye Bob, we’ll miss you) and the new (Willem Dafoe as the afterlife police). While old-timers will like the nods to the past (the waiting room and the crazy hallway), you don’t have to know Beetlejuice to appreciate the bizarreness that Burton brings.
The only problem with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the lack of anything really new, especially when there is so much in the afterlife that is extremely intriguing. Also, the romance angle — Lydia with Rory, Beetlejuice and Delores, Astrid and Jeremy — feels unnecessary. I mean all one ever needs is Lydia and Beetlejuice anyway.
