“Daylight come and me want to go”…see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)!

Another recommendation: see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with as little prior knowledge as possible. You’ll spill your guts laughing. Underneath the film’s skin of laughs and the muscles of macabre, there’s a beating heart. Like the first film (the fact that I can even say, “first film,” in reference to Beetlejuice is pretty mind-blowing), but in a distinctly different form from the first film, there’s a story about family. Above all, it’s weird, it’s crazy, and it’s fun. You’ll have the time of your afterlife.

I really enjoy Tim Burton’s work. The way he makes the weird whimsical and the macabre magical resonates with me. I first watched Beetlejuice (1988) because I was making my way through Tim Burton’s filmography for this exact reason. Beetlejuice both snuck up on me and burst out of hiding, loudly announcing it was here to stay. And in my brain it has stayed. (I even got to play Lydia in Zooming the Movies’ virtual Halloween Beetlejuice reading!)

My memory of watching Beetlejuice for the first time with next to no prior knowledge of it is engraved in my brain. Words cannot describe the jolt of awestruck joy and bliss of being smacked upside the head with that scene when you have absolutely no idea it’s coming.

So, as soon as I knew Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was rising from the Netherworld, I set out to replicate that experience as much as possible. I watched the teaser trailer, and that’s it.

I avoided the full trailer as much as I avoided saying that name three times, and thank goodness I did, because watching it now, it spoils so much of what I enjoyed seeing organically and some great turns along the twisted road to the Netherworld.

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (both of whom also work on the Wednesday series with Tim Burton) deserve a lot of credit for taking this story in an entirely new direction. While the first film mostly focused on the “recently deceased” who are stuck in between the land of the living and the land of the dead, this film focuses on the living who are so connected to the deceased (some more recently than others) that they find themselves stuck in their own in-between. While there’s an undercurrent about family, like in the first film, this film’s undercurrent goes in a different direction, giving us a chance to watch characters we know and love do something new and different.

Tim Burton’s stamp (pun intended, if you’ve seen the movie) is all over this film. It looks and feels like a Tim Burton film. From the designs, to the colors, to the stop-motion animation, to the overall tone, it’s unmistakable. You could have the sound off and be half asleep while scanning through channels in the middle of the night and know, “Oh, this is definitely a Tim Burton film.” But, if you have the sound on, you’ll hear the wonderful, thrilling music from Danny Elfman, returning with both familiar and new music to give this story about death…life!

From here on out, heavy spoilers lurk in the shadows, waiting to jump out. I’ll do my best, but just in case: go see the movie, and then, come back here.

Much of the humor in Beetlejuice comes from taking dark-in-theory premises and having fun with them in practice, whether with visuals, sound, performances, or some combination thereof. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice not only continues that style but expands on it. At the climax of the first film, an amoral ghost who’s been dead hundreds of years tries to force a teenager to marry him. For the audience who’s been laughing at his rapid-fire, manic wisecracks and physical gags as well as…well, most of what we’ve seen and heard of the afterlife so far, it’s a hilarious and exciting climactic scene. For the teenager who just met this ghost she’s now being forced to marry and watch two new parental figures almost go through “death for the dead” right before her eyes…even a “strange and unusual” fascination with the macabre draws the line at “whether you’re dead or not, this is bad news.”

So, in this film, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has two sides of her personality. There’s the goth who marvels at the macabre and snarks at a ghost in passing (pun intended). Lydia who enjoys talking to ghosts so much, has used her ability not to banish ghosts from the houses they haunt, but to find a way for the living and the dead to coexist in those “ghost houses.” And then there’s the side of her that awkwardly struggles to connect to the living…and is absolutely traumatized by the torment and almost-forced-marriage Beetlejuice put her through. Ryder plays both sides and merges them into a character who is still Lydia.

Catherine O’Hara also returns as Delia Deetz. Delia is…still Delia. In the absolute best way. The only thing that’s grown and changed about her is her ego, and with it, her art. Of course, her self-proclaimed “dangerous” art would go from sculpture to literally using herself as her canvas. Because Delia knows about Beetlejuice now, she gets to directly interact with him, and those scenes are an absolute treat.

Yes, Michael Keaton is back in black-and-white stripes as Beetlejuice. And yes, he absolutely hasn’t missed a beat. He’s just as manic, unhinged, gross, sleazy, and downright delightful as he was when we first met him. Keaton and O’Hara have hilarious chemistry that we understandably didn’t get to see in the first film but get to see here to wonderful effect. It says something about both Keaton’s performance, Gough and Millar’s writing, and Burton’s directing that as soon as someone said his name three times for the first time, the person next to me in the theater audibly gasped.

The newcomers are all fun. Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega), Lydia’s daughter, is definitely a Deetz, while still being a unique character on her own. Ortega brings a great spark to the jaded, but more logical Astrid making her fun and interesting to watch, showing that even through her jadedness, she still has fight in her. Rory (Justin Theroux) has a tough act to pull off and achieves it. From Rory’s very first line…I hated him. But he’s so funny that you can’t hate him being on screen. Willem Dafoe is just out-of-touch enough as Wolf Jackson, who’s clearly starring in his own movie elsewhere in the Netherworld that occasionally crosses over with the story we’re following. Monica Bellucci plays Delores very straight, which gives an extra depth of darkness to the story and makes her a great foil when she crosses paths with our main characters. One standout who deserves way more credit is Burn Gorman as Father Damien. My goodness, did his every line and lip twitch have me laughing as he brings absolute sincerity to a reverend who starts off every somber spiel sounding like a typical religious figure…until he devolves into a stream of randomly selected buzzwords that no one’s following anymore. Gorman’s a delight to watch during the climax.

That’s a lot of characters. There’s a lot going on in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. While the first film’s story was mostly contained in a few characters and locations (even what we saw of the afterlife was pretty limited), this film expands the world. In fact, the first film’s containment is really only evident in hindsight, which speaks to how great the story is and how great the locations are: the afterlife is so different from the Maitlands’ house that it feels huge, and when we return to the Deetzes’ completely transformed house, it feels like a completely different house.

Here, we see more of the town. We see more of the afterlife. Heck, we even read more chapters from the Handbook for the Recently Deceased! And yet, we still get to hang out inside the Deetzs’ house, from the still-untouched study, to the stairs where Lydia levitated, to the famous dining room, to the Maitlands’ attic: homemade model town and all. Personally, I enjoyed all the stories and enjoyed it when they all crashed together. I could see some people feeling lost with all the plots or feeling disappointed if a storyline they latched onto turned out to be a subplot rather than the main story. For me, it left me wanting more, just like the first film did.

The storyline around Astrid and Jeremy (the very effective Arthur Conti) is definitely a standout. Gough and Millar wove in great subversions and twists set up in a way where, even if you see one coming, you won’t see them all. Once Lydia gets involved, it really kicks into high gear and gets even more unhinged.

The core of the story, though, is between Lydia, Delia, and Astrid: three generations of women bonding. Delia and Lydia have bonded a bit more since the first film. Lydia and Astrid used to have a strong bond that’s now strained. Delia and Astrid, while perhaps not always on the same wavelength, have an understanding and rapport…sometimes at Lydia’s expense. It’s a strong central theme to wrap the story around. It’s also a refreshing one. The Maitlands became family to Lydia and, by extension, Delia and Charles, become a chosen family. Now, Delia and Lydia, though not blood-related, found a way to feel more like family to each other. Lydia and Astrid, while blood-related, have to find a way to bond that’s true to who they are, not just out of obligation because of blood.

Perhaps the most minor mystery I still find myself wondering about is if a very specific, split-second gag was fully intentional or a fun dodge for the theatrical release that will be uncensored on home media. Either way, the gag is still hilarious.

I also enjoyed the many winks to the first film that were subtly snuck in. Little Jane is still here in town. Beetlejuice does…something to his face, but we only see it from the back. Maxie Dean gets a shout-out, though it’s a mistaken one. Delores is missing her ring finger at first. Delia’s sculpture that imprisoned her shows up in both its original form and an enlarged version.

Now, on to the obvious next question…

Do we dare summon Beetlejuice again?

Frankly…I’d say there’s plenty more where that came from. In fact, whether intentionally or not, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens up several mysteries and plants several seeds that could easily grow.

We got to explore new characters, new stories, and new parts of the Netherworld, while retaining characters, ideas, and locations we know and love while not revealing so much that all the mystery and fun surprises are gone. There are still more afterlife areas to explore, more deceased (recently and otherwise) to meet, more chapters of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased to read, and maybe even more threads from the first film that could dangle their loose ends.

One of the most obvious examples is, as the first film showed us, that you can survive sandworm swallowing. I’ll just leave that there. We find out what happened to the Maitlands…but could the Soul Train ever run the opposite way? If you want to address the “ghosts don’t age” idea, there are plenty of creative ways to justify it. Delia made a promise. Can she follow through? While we’re on the subject of the Soul Train, how come Beetlejuice hasn’t taken a ride yet?

But the mystery that served as a huge plot twist for this writer is…

“She’s not dead.”

… What?

That’s present tense. Not only was she alive during the first film…she’s still alive now? Where the heck is she? Where the heck has she been all this time? What the heck happened there that across two movies, she not only never shows up, but only gets referenced in literally two lines of dialogue?

Sure, the first film leaves that ambiguous: either interpretation serves the story. Given how contained that first story was, that ambiguity makes sense. In fact, given that Lydia never brings her up when talking with actual dead people, this new information makes complete sense. It is cool knowing that Lydia’s “strange and unusual” nature is just a part of her personality and doesn’t need some tragic backstory. One line flips so much of what we may have thought we knew about these characters.

So many of the gags hit the theater like a sandworm, that I had to see it again to catch some of what I missed while we were laughing. The emotional moments also hit the theater the way they were landing with me.

…But other people heard that line, right? I wasn’t the only one gasping with my mind blown?

When Beetlejuice popped up in a critical moment, the audience (yes, including me) had a huge reaction of gasps, cheers, and other assorted exclamatory sounds…and it wasn’t even his first appearance!

The ending makes it very clear that it’s not over: even clearer than the first film did. Perhaps that’s why I see the myriad of characters and plots differently than some others might. It left me wanting more. The ending shows that there is more…should we want to unleash it. While nothing is certain in Hollywood, if those cheers Beetlejuice got just for showing his face at the right moment, I’d say it’s pretty certain that, if he does show his mug on the big screen again, we’ll be coming back to call out the ghost with the most’s name three times.

Or as many times as it takes.

In the meantime, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, once released on home media, really deserves its own analysis article. Take a number and have a seat in the waiting room…