OTwo Head of Reviews Robert Flynn reviews Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a movie which struggles to replicate the magic of Burton’s original 80’s classic
On paper, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988) would read as incomprehensible. The afterlife is actualised as a purgatory filled with grotesque ghouls who work at various bureaucratic establishments and the titular character doesn’t even make his introduction until an hour into the film. The central characters are ghosts and the supporting cast are so wacky and electric that at first they appear completely alienating. Burton is somehow able to weave all of this together. The living and the dead, the usual and the unusual, the sandworms and the shrunken heads; they all are given room to coexist in a towering country home atop a hill, across a story which unfolds in less than a hundred minutes. Though Beetlejuice will always be an impressive feat of storytelling, visionary director Tim Burton’s sequel makes it seem like more of a matter of luck than talent.
Picking up almost 40 years after the erratic and spooky happenings of Beetlejuice (1988), we’re reintroduced to Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) who is remains tied to the afterlife, but has but has transitioned into presenting her own paranormal television show. Behind the scenes she’s despondent and haunted by visions of the strikingly familiar, “ghost with the most”, Betelelguise (Michael Keaton). Betelgeuse longs for Lydia just as he did decades prior and sees an opportunity to hop, skip and waltz his way back into her life after the passing of Lydia’s father Charles. The Deetz family, including Catherine O’Hara and newcomer Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s distant and rebellious daughter, reconvene in the old house in New England for a funeral where the dead may be much more alive than the Deetzes expect.
Lydia and her daughter Astrid are bereft after losing Charles but Astrid also mourns the loss of her father Richard (Santiago Cabrera) much more strongly. Lydia becomes increasingly concerned with Beetlejuice reappearing in her life while also trying to fend off her overly-sensitive and verbose boyfriend/television producer Rory (Justin Theroux) and his suggestions of marriage. Even Betelgeuse has issues of his own. A demon/witch from the era of the Black Plague named Delores (Monica Bellucci) reassembles her body parts and seeks out Betelgeuse to suck out his soul and to cast him into the great beyond, where there is no return ticket. One thing becomes apparent when watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024); everyones running from something.
It is for this reason that the film begins to pale in comparison to the original. While the former film tells you everything you need to know about a character the minute you meet them, Burton’s sequel gets bogged down in backstory and pedestrian observations on grief. There’s even a romantic arc between Astrid and an eerily unsuspecting boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti) which is over before it even begins. Within its overstuffed narrative, Betelgeuse’s role feels incredibly undefined and often forced which costs the film any sense of tension or engagement. Giving him his own intentions and plot line costs Betelgeuse his usual enigmatic and unpredictable presence which often makes his role in the film feel superfluous. In the original Burton film, Betelgeuse is omnipresent. In this sequel he’s begging for you to notice him.
Where Burton is able to pull some focus is through his acerbic sense of humour, which has been lacking in his recent filmography. O’Hara and Theroux give incredibly dialled-in performances that help to contrast against the film's gothic and ghoulish set and character designs. They each play dramatic art-types who yearn to find the beauty in every aspect of life but lack any of the ingenuity or humility needed to do so. Even Burton’s visual gags provide some laughs, despite the fact that his use of VFX is more reminiscent of Rob Zombie’s The Munsters (2022) than it is Burton’s former stop-motion efforts. Unfortunately, Burton’s humour, which arguably peaked in the 80s, can often come across as out of touch.
A ‘Soul Train’ which blares 70s disco music and is crowded by skeletons and ghouls wearing flared jeans and long collared shirts, a sequence which replicates 1960s Italian horror films, and a scene where a plethora of influencers are sucked into their tightly held iPhones are all gags which feel incredibly tone deaf and inspired nothing but mirthless shrugs in the cinema.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) builds to several endings as a result of its litany of characters; one of which concerns an afterlife actor turned cop named Wolf Jackson played delightfully by Willem Dafoe. Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson is a prime example of what is wrong with Burton’s legacy sequel. It makes room for lots of new ideas but holds on to its old ones too tightly. Among its litany of ideas, so few of them actually work in tandem with one another. As Burton jumps from one chaotic idea to the next, the film's lack of cohesion and catharsis makes you wonder how he ever pulled it off in the first place.