‘Beetlejuice’ Turns Haunting on Its Head

The original holds up, and the late sequel earns its keep.

The new Beetlejuice Beetlejuice offers some good bonkers fun. I enjoyed it, but it is a bit overstuffed.

Among the strengths of the original Beetlejuice is its tight focus. It’s like a short story that’s given a little extra breathing room as a movie, whereas the sequel is more like a novel that’s been compressed into a movie. The latter tends to give the feeling that either something is missing or something needed to be cut.

The 1988 movie doesn’t have that problem. It zeroes in on a straightforward, creative idea and spends the right amount of time with it. It takes the familiar concepts of ghosts and haunting, spins them around, and reverses the traditional dynamic. In Beetlejuice, the living aren’t trying to exorcise the ghosts—the ghosts are trying to exorcise the living. It’s a brilliant premise.

(Spoilers ahead for the original movie. No real spoilers for the sequel, but read at your own risk.)

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play husband and wife Adam and Barbara Maitland. They’re our protagonists, and the movie wastes little time in killing them off. That’s right. This is not the sort of movie where the heroes die at the end—it’s the sort where they die at the beginning.

The Maitlands find themselves back at their home, and they don’t immediately realize what’s happened. The hints soon pile up. No reflections. Fire doesn’t burn them. Whenever they try to leave the house, they appear in a bizarre alien desert populated by giant worm monsters. A copy of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased has appeared in their home. Yeah, they’re dead.

The handbook is a nice piece of gradual world-building and foreshadowing. We’re learning about the afterlife right alongside Adam and Barbara. Screenwriters Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren withhold the exposition until we’re ready for it. We don’t need to know every last facet of the afterlife. For now, we simply learn that death comes with an instructional manual. A very boring instructional manual.

Initially for the Maitlands, the afterlife seems to consist of being trapped in their own home, all alone, just the two of them. There are worse fates for a young married couple. And a worse fate soon arrives in the form of Delia and Charles Deetz (Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones), the new owners of the house.

A more conventional movie might have focused on the family who’s moving into the haunted house, and we’d follow their struggles as they encounter paranormal activity and attempt to purge the place of wicked spirits. Not here. The Maitlands aren’t wicked, but Delia and Charles are a nuisance. Adam and Barbara cannot rest in peace while Delia and her interior designer friend remodel their beloved house and alter it beyond recognition.

So, being ghosts, Adam and Barbara resolve to haunt the Deetzes and frighten them away. But what happens when imperceptible ghosts try to haunt people? Beetlejuice shows you, and it’s quite amusing to watch Adam and Barbara’s attempts at shocking horror while the living just go about their business, oblivious.

Now we get to the more detailed world-building. At a loss, Adam and Barbara consult the handbook and enter a new realm of the afterlife. Or at least its waiting room.

Director Tim Burton crafts an afterlife that is neither heaven nor hell. Instead of angels and devils, we get bureaucrats and civil servants. And dead people don’t revert to idealized versions of themselves. No, their mortal wounds remain part of their physical appearance, creating visual variety in an appropriately ghoulish manner. In Burton’s grand vision, the dead take a number and wait for their caseworker.

The Maitlands learn that they must spend the first 125 years of their deaths as ghosts in their home. If they want to get the Deetzes out, they must do it themselves. But they’re inept ghosts—so incompetent that they resort to pulling bedsheets over their heads like cartoon characters. The effort falls flat, of course, but they finally make contact with the one person who can see and hear them, the Deetzes’ teenage daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder).

Lydia, the quintessential goth girl, serves as the connection between the living and the dead. Adam and Barbara, who never had children of their own, become genuinely fond of this girl who’s fascinated with death.

But the Maitlands still want to get rid of the parents. In their desperation, they turn to an unsavory character, a bio-exorcist named Betelgeuse, whom the movie has only hinted at until now. Their caseworker warned them not to summon Betelgeuse and not to even speak his name—because he will appear the third time you say Betelgeuse.

Michael Keaton goes all the way overboard as the title character, as he should. He’s like a demented, crude version of the Genie from Aladdin, though he predates that character by a few years. He’s Bizarro Genie. And as his late entrance suggests, he is not the main character of this movie. He—not Charles or Delia—is the true antagonist.

Ultimately, Betelgeuse’s chaos brings the living and the dead closer together, and they learn to coexist in the house. Lydia becomes like the daughter Adam and Barbara never had. It’s a happy ending, even though two of the main characters are still dead.

Beetlejuice—like its ghostly protagonists—seldom strays from the house during its 92-minute run. We venture into some adjacent realms, such as the alien desert and the offices of the afterlife, but then it’s right back to the house. A model display of the town serves as an alternate setting within the main setting, but it’s still inside the same place. The model also acts as a modern version of an occult containment circle, as it mostly confines the miniature Betelgeuse until he fully emerges at the end.

Throughout, we hear the brilliant work of composer Danny Elfman. The main theme evokes a deranged carnival whose rides would fail any safety inspection.

Beetlejuice is a Tim Burton movie through and through. He infuses it with his specific style of strangeness, resulting in a truly original movie that only he and his team could have created. As I’ve previously said, great creative works require two key ingredients: mastery of the fundamentals, and that special spark that only you can bring.

That’s what Burton and company achieved back in 1988, and the movie holds up as tremendous fun. It’s unhinged, but not too unhinged. Beneath all the cleverness and imagination, it’s still about something much more grounded—very different people learning to get along and growing closer (the same theme Honey, I Shrunk the Kids explored while using an entirely different gimmick).

But could Burton do it again 36 years later?

Yes, to a lesser extent. It’s not as tightly focused or fresh as the original, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ramps up the lunacy in a way that hit the spot for me.

The script indulges in the occasional convenience along the way, and there is a bit too much going on overall. The original movie demonstrated admirable discipline in keeping most of its focus on a fairly narrow group, but the new movie features a more bloated cast (even without Alec Baldwin or Geena Davis). Just compare the two posters.

It’s a great cast, but maybe it’s too much of a great cast. Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe all play new characters and all do solid work, but perhaps Burton could have saved one or two of them for another sequel.

One new character is essential, and she’s perfectly cast. Jenna Ortega plays Astrid, Lydia’s daughter. Winona Ryder returns, and so does Catherine O’Hara as her stepmother. A key element of the movie is that it’s ultimately about something that translates into the real world—mother/daughter relationships.

Though Betelgeuse still isn’t the main protagonist, there would be no Beetlejuice without Michael Keaton. His being twice as old doesn’t slow down Betelgeuse in the least. He’s every bit as manic and off-kilter as before.

Events bring the three Deetz women into the afterlife, where amusing gags abound, the best of which is the soul train. There’s plenty of randomness and chaos throughout the movie, but the motivations of the various characters glue everything together just enough.

By the time we get to the climax, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is utter madness. But it earns the madness. Though it never surpasses the original, it does make for an enjoyable belated encore. Speaking of encores …

There’s also a musical.

Like so many other pieces of IP before him, Beetlejuice has made his way to Broadway. I have not seen the musical, but my sister and niece have, and they both highly recommend it. It’s their favorite version of Beetlejuice.

It may be worth checking out if it comes to town. I’ll have to see it next time it comes here.

If only there was a way to summon it …