I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Beetlejuice sequel – I’d seen a trailer for it (linked in the info panel above) but I’d avoided most of the chat about it as I wanted to go into it with a fresh pair of eyes.
It had been almost 5 years since I watched the “original” Beetlejuice when I reviewed it for my 31 days of Halloween series back in 2019. You can read my Beetlejuice review here, although I’d note if I was writing it today I would have formatted it a little differently and included a lot more of my thoughts and less of the plot line, but despite that I think it’s still a good overview of the first film.
Because it had been so long since I’d seen Beetlejuice (that’s at least the third time I’ve said his name – is he going to haunt this review?) I thought I’d rewatch it before seeing the sequel.
In retrospect that was a huge mistake.
While the original film was something we’d not seen before, quirky, humorous and held a lot of charm, being able to so directly compare the sequel to it’s parent film really highlighted, to me at least, what a shallow imitation of its predecessor this was.
But before I get all ranty and ravey about this film let’s take a look at the plot.
What’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice About?
We’re now around thirty years in the future from the first film, Lydia Deetz (Winnoa Ryder – Beetlejuice (1988), Girl Interrupted (1999), Stranger Things (2016+) ) can still see ghosts and she’s turned this into a lucrative TV career by presenting a haunted house show produced by her slimy boyfriend Rory (Justin Theroux – The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018), The Leftovers (2014-17)).
Lydia’s been seeing glimpses of Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton – Dopesick (2021), The Founder (2016), Batman (1989), Beetlejuice (1988)) and it’s freaked her out so much she’s taking medication to calm her nerves, something that Rory doesn’t want her to do as she’s not able to see ghosts and therefore make any money (what a lovely chap, eh?)
Lydia has to rush away from the taping of her show to console her Step-Mother Delia (Catherine O’Hara – Schitt’s Creek (2015-2020), Home Alone (1990), Beetlejuice (1988)) after Lydia’s father was killed (I won’t spoil how – this animated segment is one of the best bits in the movie).
Delia decides that her husband, Charles, should be buried where he was happiest – Winter River in Connecticut (the setting for the first film). They drive to retrieve Lydia’s daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega – Scream (2022), Wednesday (2022), Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)), from Private School, a place where even though Astrid is bullied she can still hold her own so we know she’s not a pushover.
After reaching Winter River, Astrid and Lydia have a fight over whether ghosts are real and if they are, why Lydia can’t see Astrid’s dead father and after the row, Lydia flees on a bike and has an accident that leads her to meet Jeremy (Arthur Conti in his first film role).
Astrid and Arthur get on like a house on fire, but this friendship will lead Astrid to enter the Afterlife and its maze of waiting rooms and offices.
When Lydia discovers this, she realises she needs help so summons Beetlejuice to get her access the Afterlife and aid in rescuing her daughter – the question is, what does he want in return and can he be trusted?
(Editor’s note: Of course he can’t, he’s Beetlejuice for goodness sake!)
So now that you’re familiar with the plot, let’s get on the the my thoughts. Buckle up folks, I have quite a few!
The Good
Jenna Ortega and Arthur Conti are great as Astrid and Jeremy, there’s a real chemistry between them and you can see why Astrid would almost latch onto Jeremy so quickly – she seeks normalcy and he’s about as normal as you can get – until he’s not.
Arthur Conti is also one to watch as he is brilliant as Jeremy – I knew there wasn’t something quite right about the character but couldn’t put my finger on it and the way Conti played the him makes me think he could really go places if he gets the right roles.
William Defoe (Poor Things (2023), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Platoon (1986)) also shines as an actor who always did his own stunts and died during a freak accident while playing a cop. Now he’s in the Afterlife stuck in full “detective” mode (replete with cups of coffee supplied by his “secretary”) and he’s obviously loving hamming up and taking the mickey out of the acting profession.
But, to me the main star of the film is Bob, a shrunken headed individual who works as Beetlejuice’s very put-upon assistant – the stuff poor Bob has to deal with would cause anyone to break down! The weird thing is Bob doesn’t utter a single line throughout the entire film (his mouth’s sewn shut so it’s a bit hard for him to do so) but the way he almost breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera with his big and expressive eyes was the thing that I found most amusing in the film.
And that brings us to…
The Bad
I don’t know what happened in the intervening 34 years but the writers seem to have had a sense of humour bypass as there was hardly anything funny or original about this film at all.
If you hadn’t seen Beetlejuice then the Waiting Room scenes probably would have been hilarious, but they’re just cheap knock-offs of what its predecessor did so cleverly. There’s no twists, no new ideas and nothing to make it stand out from the original movie.
Lydia and Delia seem to be caricatures of themselves and while they appear to tolerate each other, there has been no emotional growth between the pair over 30+ years and yet the animosity between them is also no longer present leaving me to wonder what the heck their relationship even is.
At one point Delia even mentions “the angry goth girl that used to hate me? She needs to come back” in reference to how Lydia is dealing with slimeball Rory and yet we don’t see any acknowledgement of how that factored into their past relationship and only get an off-handed mention about how that affects Lydia and Astrid’s relationship as well.
I would have much preferred it if Lydia and Delia were still very much at odds with each other – maybe over Lydia’s parenting and Lydia could (quite rightly) comment that Delia has no right to talk thanks to her own lack of parenting skills.
Instead we get two adults who seem reasonably friendly and yet don’t seem to convey that on screen very well. This isn’t down to the acting by the way, it’s down to some very bad two dimensional writing from Alfred Gough (Smallville (2001-2017), Wednesday (2022)) and Miles Millar (Shanghai Noon (2000), Smallville (2001-2017), Wednesday (2022)).
It’s notable that both these writers have mainly written for television (although they have several film “story by” accreditations) and I think this shows in their script. They’re used to having a whole season to develop a character arc and their relationships to others on the show and I think that’s why they fail to capture the essence of the relationships between Lydia, Delia and Astrid in the short (by comparison of a TV series) run time of 1 hour and 45 minutes.
The Ugly
The ugly is we did not need this film at all.
If you wanted to bring Beetlejuice to a modern audience then maybe go back and digitally remaster the original and redo some of the effects (although I’d argue against that as the stop-motion lends itself to the creepiness of the film).
We learned nothing new about the characters, they were not driven forward in any meaningful way and the only thing that really happened was that Astrid turned into the kid from the Sixth Sense and could see dead people all along (Oh, spoiler if you’ve not seen that 25 year old movie, sorry!)
And going back to the terrible writing, it’s also lazy too as it’s takes plot points directly from Beetlejuice – Lydia’s got to get married to that disgusting Demon-Freak because she needed his help? Now where could I have possibly seen that plot point before? Oh! Hang on – IT’S WHAT THE FIRST FILM WAS ABOUT AND NOW IT’S WHAT THE SEQUEL IS ABOUT TOO!!!!!
Ah hem. Sorry, I’ll try to calm down now.
View Tim Burton Films On Amazon
There’s also a bizarre sub-plot revolving around Beetlejuice’s ex-wife (who was briefly mentioned in the first movie when Beetlejuice pulls a finger with a wedding ring on it from his pocket) but this isn’t mentioned at all.
This whole plot could have been left out completely and it would not have really impacted the way the main story worked at all – sure you would have needed to tweak the ending a little but that would have been simple enough.
What would have been better would have been to have had the ex-wife (played wonderfully for what little screen time she had by Monica Bellucci (Spectre (2015), The Brothers Grimm (2005))) appear at the end of the film and then set up for a sequel where Defoe’s “Detective” Wolf Jackson, Lydia and Beetlejuice have to try and hunt her down before she can suck the souls of too many humans – you can have that one for free Beetlejuice writers, just do a better job – third time lucky as they say.
It’s a shame because I was hoping for so much from this film but Tim Burton (Dumbo (2019), Planet Of The Apes (2001), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Beetlejuice (1988)) directs this in such a “by the numbers” way it’s like he’s phoning it in.
I’m sure he would argue that he’s being “faithful” to the original film but I’m afraid that’s no excuse for boring scene setups, predictable shots, actor’s reactions, lack of funny jokes/knowing winks… the whole thing.
I did have high hopes for the musical score, the first film had some wonderful original music and clever use of existing songs. And while the film opens with Elfman’s iconic Beetlejuice theme, the rest was just sadly forgetful and their attempt to recreate the musical possession screen during the film’s alleged big finale (yet another lazy thing from the writers) was a pale imitation at best and fell flat and it was also way, WAY too long.
Final Thoughts
As I said at the start of this review (a long time ago – sorry and congratulations if you’ve made it this far!) perhaps I should not have watched the original Beetlejuice just before watching this one.
Maybe seeing the 1988 version and what it accomplished with no CGI and a budget of only $15 million (around $40 million adjusted for inflation) gave me high hopes when you consider Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had a production budget of $100 million.
What they spent that money on I don’t know – it certainly wasn’t the script or the music that’s for certain.
It’ a shame as I really, really wanted to like this film as the original has a special place in my heart – as I’m sure it does for all “Xennial” and “Elder” Millennials out there – but instead I was just left with a “Oh, I shouldn’t really have bothered” kind of feeling.
That’s not to say the film isn’t good – it’s just not as good as it could should have been.
Watch this if you have never seen the original Beetlejuice and want to see what the story is about, or you can watch this if you want to get worked up like I did and rave about how nothing Hollywood does is original any more and everyone’s just out to make nostalgia cash.
