Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Dir: Tim Burton (13th Floor Film Review) ***

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: A Mildly Amusing Pastiche

Starring: Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Willem DaFoe

It’s been thirty-six years since Betelgeuse, the demented demon exorcist, first haunted our screens. Tim Burton has returned to resurrect the film from I.P. purgatory after a disappointing decade and a half of frustratingly mediocre projects.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice doesn’t have a cohesive story, with a dizzying number of plots and subplots. What you need to know is that after a family tragedy, the Deetz family has returned to Winter River. Winona Ryder revives her character Lydia, now a professional medium with a hit TV show, Ghost House with Lydia Deetz. Her daughter Astrid, played by franchise newcomer and Wednesday star Jenna Ortega, accidentally opens a portal to the afterlife.

Now is the time to admit that I’m not an adoring fan of Beetlejuice and much of Burton’s oeuvre. But Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is still fun, even if it is nostalgia bait that sees Burton again returning to a pre-existing sandbox. The once-subversive cultural force is desperately trying to recapture the magic of Beetlejuice. The secretarial complex for those stuck in purgatory’s waiting room mirrors where Burton has now arrived as a filmmaker. He’s awkwardly sandwiched between two worlds—the analogue and the digital.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is at its best in the afterlife, not in Winter River, which has an unnerving visual blandness. There’s a look, an epidemic in Hollywood where films set in the real world feel flat, fake and over-saturated. A studio executive has seemingly decided to strip all life from films for visual and technical consistency. Thankfully, when in the afterlife, Burton has enough juice to bring Beetlejuice Beetlejuice back from the great beyond.

There are plenty of darkly humorous visual gags to enjoy. One solves the problem of Charles Deetz, played by the now disgraced actor Jeffrey Jones. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and carnival fun house inspired set design is sublime. Willem Dafoe shines as an over-the-top caricature of a Clint Eastwood-type cop. I could not get enough of Bob, a shrunken Zombie puppet. He’s the assistant to Michael Keaton, who returns as Betelgeuse. Minus the edginess, this time around, Keaton and his titular character are again a jarring presence that gets in the way of the earnestness of both films.

In another star-making performance, Ortega is the counterbalance to Betelgeuse. She infuses Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with a vital sense of pathos and tragedy. Her deadpan face and Kubrick stare are an anecdote to the overbearing silliness of the film.

Fans of Beetlejuice, drunk on nostalgia, will love seeing Betelgeuse on the big screen again. But, with a healthy helping of wistful self-indulgence and a scarcity of inventiveness, I doubt Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will give rise to a new generation of goths. Hopefully, audiences new to Burton will visit Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, or Sleepy Hollow and discover a filmmaker who was once a true visionary.

Thomas Giblin

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas nationwide. Click here for tickets and showtimes.