Tim Burton could have easily fallen into the trap of making yet another Hollywood “legacyquel” by reviving his 1988 breakout hit “Beetlejuice.” He’s not entirely immune from providing fan service in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” a proclivity demonstrated as early on as the opening credits that mimic the helicopter tracking shot of the original … just with darker color grading now. But overall, Burton grasps the need not merely to resurrect the beloved characters—he must also revivify them.
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One of the new creations for the film, Justin Theroux’s man bun-sporting Rory, delivers Burton’s justification for bringing “Beetlejuice” into a new era of horror. As Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz (who now serves as the host of a “Ghost Hunters”-esque reality show) recounts the events of the first film to her producer and would-be romantic partner, he politely dismisses her description. Referring to Michael Keaton’s titular bio-exorcist as “a construct of unpacked trauma,” he reinterprets the film through the lens of contemporary “metaphorror” that insists the language of therapy can defuse all terror.
Yet Burton, a pioneer of goth culture through his singular cinematic sensibility, has no interest in fitting the trends. Sure, he parlays plenty of cultural cachet from casting Gen Z icon Jenna Ortega, the breakout star of Netflix’s “Wednesday” series, into a largely parallel role as Lydia’s daughter Astrid. But that’s about the extent of Burton bending the knee with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” His sequel treats horror not as something to be unpacked but as something to be unnerving (in a family-friendly fashion!) to the audience. There’s no diagnosis when it comes to horror with Burton. It’s just his disposition toward a world of feigned normalcy, which he renders in phantasmagoric splendor.
While the film features no shortage of impressive CGI effects, Burton maintains the series’ stylistic integrity by continuing to leverage practical effects and animation where possible. His true talent as an artist lies in his ability to render imagination with tactile elements, not just pixels. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” possesses an endearingly carnivalesque, cartoonish quality that imbues Burton with the freedom to bring fun and fright alike to the screen.
Perhaps fittingly given the subject matter of the film, returning to something presumed dead brings Burton—a director who’s often succumbed to the auteurist temptation of becoming one’s own best imitator—back to life. He’s always had a duality to his work as an insider who came up through Disney’s hallowed halls of animation but an outsider whose baroque proclivities never meshed neatly with child-oriented entertainment. “Beetlejuice” let him merge both identities into one, and his subsequent effort is no different.
When committing to this oddball vision by letting his warped worldview dominate the frame, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” delightfully fuses the marvelous and the macabre. It restores a vitality to his work that went missing in decades of manufacturing factory-line studio products. As a director who does not pen his screenplays, however, the script occasionally lets down his monster movie. The film feels Frankenstein-ed together across multiple drafts from its three credited screenwriters, with Burton’s distinct aesthetic doing much work to paper over the gaps.
Unlike the original “Beetlejuice,” which deftly blurs the line between protagonists and antagonists, this sequel bursts out of the gate with a clear villain to provide the film with a narrative backbone. A freak chain of events brings back Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, Delores (Monica Bellucci), from the dead and sets the former lovers on a collision course. Yet this central character bizarrely disappears for large portions of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”—especially in its back half.
In the meantime, Burton wisely lets his characters chew the colorful German Expressionist-inspired scenery. Keaton’s Beetlejuice once again appears in surprisingly few scenes, yet his grizzled Borscht Belt comedic stylings pervade well beyond his actual presence in the film. Among other returning characters, Catherine O’Hara (given free rein to go full Moira Rose from “Schitt’s Creek”) provides the humor as matriarch Delia Deetz, while Ryder’s Lydia brings the heart. The new additions to the world are all welcome company as well, especially Willem Dafoe’s Wolf Jackson as a dead procedural cop show actor who self-seriously leads an Afterlife Crime Unit.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” stacks each scene with so much talent that it’s easy to miss that the film often operates on three disparate plot tracks: Delores’ pursuit of Monica, Lydia’s attempt to wrangle multiple generations of the Deetz family, and Astrid’s dalliance with her fellow teenage Dostoyevsky devotee Jeremy (Arthur Conti). The experience proves so overstimulating with both horror and comedy that few moments arise to reflect upon the film’s construction. If the characters ever feel like they hit a wall, Burton swoops in with a new ingeniously envisioned element of the afterlife (such as the “Soul Train”) to amuse.
By the film’s conclusion, however, these disparate elements all build together into a crescendo complete with unabashedly exaggerated musicality. The faint scent of intellectual property looms a little too large over “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” to call it a true return to form for Tim Burton. But it’s unmistakably a return to joy for a legendary director, and that goes a long way in making this film stand out in a sea of ill-conceived sequels. [B]
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” hits theaters on September 6 via Warner Bros.
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