’Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’: Venice Review

Dir. Tim Burton. US/UK. 2024. 104mins

Thirty-six years on, ghouls still wanna have fun in Tim Burton’s belated sequel to 1988 hit horror spoof Beetlejuice. As that was the film that fully established the director’s idiosyncratic mercurial-macabre style, it seems appropriate that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice should be his most full-bloodedly Burtonesque venture in ages, with its boisterous mix of the facetious and the funereal.

Comfort food for long-term Burton fans

With returning stars Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Michael Keaton – the latter as the titular raspy-voiced demon-slob – this is very much a nostalgia trip, and so dependent on referencing the original that newcomers may not click with it. But given that Ryder and O’Hara are currently enjoying small-screen success (Stranger Things and Schitt’s Creek respectively), plus the rising visibility of Jenna Ortega (from the rebooted Scream series and Burton-exec’d show Wednesday), this property should be in for a lively resurrection when the film is released globally on September 6 following its Venice opening night premiere. 

The ‘next generation’ narrative starts with Beetlejuice’s young heroine Lydia Deetz (Ryder) now adult, widowed and a psychic hosting a popular TV show. Able to see the dead, she is also haunted by visions of her admirer from the afterlife – the leering, mildew-faced shape-shifter Beetlejuice. After the death of her father Charles (shown in an animation sequence), Lydia returns to her family’s old haunted house with her self-absorbed avant-gardist mother Delia (O’Hara, characteristically larger than life), and her disenchanted, eco-conscious daughter Astrid (Ortega). In an echo of the original’s plot, Lydia faces a Halloween wedding to her coercive boyfriend/manager (Justin Theroux), while Astrid clicks with a serious-minded local boy (Arthur Conti).  Beetlejuice, meanwhile, is pursued by his own vengeful ex, soul-sucking fiend Dolores (a silkily sinister Monica Bellucci). 

Screenwriters (and Wednesday showrunners) Alfred Gough and Miles Millar – with Seth Grahame-Smith sharing story credit – cannily stitch together a framework that is more narratively intricate than the first film. They interweave several plot strands to crafty but often confusing effect, and a lot depends on the viewer recognising recurring elements from 1988 – not least the reappearance of its shrunken-headed stooges and deadly sandworms.

The film makes a convincing job of giving its lead human characters plausible psyches, notwithstanding the cartoonish register. But the priority is to cram in as many grisly comic riffs as possible, from visual puns on phrases like ‘inner child’ and ’spill your guts’ to a relishable digression on Beetlejuice’s romance with Dolores, recounted in Italian by way of homage to Euro horror maestro Mario Bava. But the film’s most laudable achievement is its boisterous way of reclaiming highly tactile practical and animatronic effects for the CGI age – in keeping with one character’s mantra, “Keep it real”. 

Among the top-flight cast, Ryder and O’Hara excel. The latter amplifies her original Delia to further levels of narcisstic neuroses, while Ryder’s anxious, vulnerable Lydia sensitively confronts the question of what happens to goth kids when they get older and face mundane mortal reality. Stepping into Ryder’s shoes as this film’s troubled teen, Ortega contributes a likeable no-nonsense candour. Willem Dafoe – donning yet more prosthetic make-up after Poor Things – has a nicely broad role as an afterlife cop, while a much-loved Burton associate from way back contributes the gruff cameo that kick-starts the whole story. 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice may not be that fresh or substantial – it’s basically comfort food for long-term Burton fans – but it’ll be hard for viewers to repress a pleased smile, or graveyard rictus.