“The juice is loose.”
On March 21, these four iconic words confirmed the return of one of cinema’s most beloved characters: the one and only Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice (1988) is easily one of the most bizarre movies I have ever seen. It’s marketed as a dark comedy/horror film, but even that description doesn’t match its cinematic insanity and greatness.
The titular character, Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is a “bio-exorcist” who claims to be able to evict living people from houses easily. With fried, lime-green hair and an iconic pin-striped suit, it’s easy to tell that he has become a demon. He was once a living man but was eventually banished to the afterlife for heinous acts—acts that are not uncovered until the sequel. His self-employed job is traditionally done in the favor of ghosts, and also to annoy living people.
In the first film, the living characters were the Deetzes, a snobby New York family that had decided to move to the cozy town of Winter River, Connecticut for its aesthetic. The daughter, Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has a special ability to see ghosts, pitting her against her shallow parents, who don’t share the same supernatural abilities. Her stepmother, Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) is an aspiring sculpture artist who has yet to find success. Her father, Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones) is a real estate agent, looking to market some boutique homes away from the city. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get his wish.
Instead, the Deetzes find a haunted, dusty house with a creepy fact: the previous owners had died in an unfortunate accident. These owners were the Maitlands, a newlywed couple who, after drowning in the local river, find themselves in the afterlife.
In Beetlejuice, the afterlife is depicted as an oddly strange and dystopian place, with a waiting room line of over three billion and mangled creatures everywhere you look. There is no easy answer to any problem, and newly deceased people must follow the rules given to them once they die—found in the Handbook for the Recently Deceased. Once people die, they become ghosts, doomed to haunt their old residences for a specific period, usually over 100 years. If they attempt to escape, then they are easily shipped to Saturn, where a black and white patterned sandworm will try to eat them. If these unfortunate souls make it back to the afterlife, then they will find that the time passed will have doubled. If they left in the morning, then they will find themselves in the dark of night upon returning home.
In the 1988 original, the Maitlands, looking to banish the Deetzes from their former home, decide to hire Beetlejuice. They find him in a miniature model the husband had made of the entire town. By saying Beetlejuice three times in a row, they employ his gruesome services, but they cannot seem to get rid of him once they realize his intentions are less than noble. That is until Lydia Deetz decides to help them evict Beetlejuice and put an end to the terrors he does to her family and the Maitlands.
The universe of Beetlejuice is not an easy one to explain, but as depicted in the first movie, there are always ghastly surprises around every corner.
36 years later, legendary gothic horror director Tim Burton announced the sequel to his 1988 classic, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with returning stars and the addition of the talented Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux, and Monica Bellucci. In the second film, Lydia Deetz is now grown up and has a daughter, Astrid Deetz (Jenna Ortega). They have an extremely strained mother-daughter relationship; Astrid attempts to avoid her at all costs. Part of this angst is due to Astrid’s father dying when she was little, and Lydia partnering with a new boyfriend who Astrid hates, known as Rory (Justin Theroux). Ever since Lydia discovered that she possesses paranormal abilities (which Astrid doesn’t believe are real), Lydia has run her own TV show, Ghost House. Even though the show propelled her to fame, it only proceeded to widen the divide between her and her daughter.
However, everything changes when Lydia’s father perishes in a plane crash-turned-shark attack in South America. Suddenly, the Deetzes are forced back to the historic house on the hill in Winter River for Charles’s funeral. As they spend time there, Lydia begins to see visions of Beetlejuice everywhere. Convinced that Beetlejuice is, in fact, not dead like she hoped, she is frantic in leaving the wretched house. However, Astrid, in a surprising plot twist, tells her she met a boy in town and wants to stay.
Not realizing she’s been tricked, Astrid opens the door to the afterlife in a rash attempt to see her father again, forcing Lydia to turn to the one poltergeist who could help her get Astrid out of the afterlife safely: Beetlejuice.
Being a risky and eccentric filmmaker, Burton employed as many cinematic techniques as possible for maximum abnormal effects. While I would usually criticize the overuse of various filming styles, somehow it all made the movie so much greater as a whole.
For example, when a flashback occurred to display the death of Lydia’s dad, the scene shifted from live-action acting to complete animation. The animation was done creatively, with the characters depicted as clay persons and original stop-motion effects. This was also a clever way to avoid placing Jeffrey Jones in the film—the original actor of Charles Deetz—since Jones was convicted of being a sex offender in 2003.
Another style Burton employed was color theory. Color theory is especially popular among filmmakers due to color’s ability to tell a deeper part of a story. When Beetlejuice’s elusive past was finally unveiled in a dramatic flashback, the colors of the film changed to various shades of black and white, depicting the final time Beetlejuice was a real man, which was during the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century. In doing this, Burton shows the bubonic plague as an extremely detrimental time in world history and also conveys the demise of the demon.
My favorite part of the film overall was the character Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe). Although Dafoe is known for gravitating toward horror and drama roles, he took an entirely different approach with Wolf. His character is, hilariously, a dead actor who attempts to lead the afterlife police force, although he has no idea what he’s doing because of course, he’s an actor. Instead of taking his trademark approach to a drama role, Dafoe adopted comedy chops and executed the role with a great sense of wit and humor. In the theater, I often laughed at his sarcastic remarks and mottos, such as “You gotta keep it real,” while smashing a steaming coffee cup in his hands.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was packed to the brim with references to the original movie, from including the Maitlands’ model of Winter River to dressing Winona Ryder back in her decades-old red wedding dress that Beetlejuice insisted she wears when trying to marry her 36 years prior. Even though I had only watched the initial film a couple of months before the sequel, I was delighted to see the homages to the quintessential first movie.
In addition to these references, the returning actors also did a wonderful job maintaining their humor and wit after so long. Keaton and O’Hara were the standouts; their flawless stage presence was unparalleled.
However, there was one aspect of the film that simply did not work: the romance.
Of all the movies I saw in theaters so far this year, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was the last movie where I thought I would see not one, but two romance subplots. Although I love romantic films and books, that doesn’t always mean romance can work effectively in every genre, especially in a movie marketed as a gothic horror.
Even though the romance subplots ended up becoming a failed mission, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice still managed to deliver its one obligation to the audience: a fun, nostalgic sequel for the die-hard fans of Beetlejuice. Despite the few flaws in the plot and a lack of genuine horror, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and wouldn’t mind seeing another film named Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in the future.
