Whenever a classic movie of a bygone era is brought back for continuation just for nostalgia pandering, one of two major problems tend to crop up the most. One, the newer entry turning out to be a total imitation of the original, lacking its individual identity, and the second being a total overhaul of narrative, tone, and treatment, to the point that there exists no similarity between the original and its successor. Fans of the first Beetlejuice movie feared the same could happen with the sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which takes place after a significantly long gap from the first entry—and even with director Tim Burton returning at the helm, the apprehensive feeling was not easy to shake off.
However, much to fans’ delight, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages to retain the haunting, sarcastic, zany goodness of the first movie, as Tim Burton’s gothic dream is perfectly manifested once again by Michael Keaton’s show-stealing performance as the eponymous loony prankster ghost. The adherence to practical effects has allowed a beautiful recreation of the phantasmagoric experience of the afterlife. With Burton and Keaton in fine form, the morbid comedy never misses a beat. Newly introduced characters played by gothic-horror icons like Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, and Jenna Ortega fit right into the world, and as a cherry on top of the whole package, a musical number dream sequence elevates the surreal experience as a whole. Yes, there are a few drawbacks regarding some of the creative decisions and due to the inclusion of too many subplots, but the vibe itself is infectious enough to overlook those aspects for the major part of the movie. With the juice finally loose, there couldn’t have been a better start to the spooky season.
Spoilers Ahead
A Tragedy in the Deetz Family
Thirty-six years have passed since the events of the original Beetlejuice movie, and with time, things have changed a lot in the Deetz family. Ghostly couple Adam and Barbara have moved on after finding a loophole in the afterlife rules; their house in Winter River stays vacant as Deetzes have moved away as well. Lydia Deetz, no longer the eccentric goth teenager, is now a middle-aged woman who is using her psychic talents to further her career as a horror TV show host. Delia Deetz has moved from postmodernist to bodily art, and Charles continues to follow his passion of birdwatching by scouring the globe. Lydia has a teenage daughter, Astrid, who shares a rather estranged relationship with her mother, whose preoccupation with the world of the deceased has created a rift between the two. Astrid takes after her late environmental activist father, Richard, and the duo used to have a strong bond until he mysteriously passed away in the Amazon rainforest (No, he wasn’t researching spiders). Never being able to cope with Richard’s demise, Astrid loathed her mother, Lydia, from this point onwards, who, despite having psychic powers, couldn’t communicate with her late husband for reasons unknown. Astrid, who regrets not having a chance to meet with her father one last time, considers Lydia’s powers and the purported existence of the paranormal to be an elaborate scam.
At present, Lydia is dating her obnoxious, clingy, and overbearing manager, Rory, who exploited her emotional weakness to get into her life and never left. One day, on her TV show set, Lydia starts seeing creepy visions of Betelgeuse, the psychotic, mischievous ghost who haunted her family all those years ago in the Maitland family house in Winter River, and reasonably gets terrified. Later that day, Delia shares the tragic news of her father’s death with Lydia after he passed away in a freaky airplane crash-shark devouring accident. Taking Astrid with them, the duo decide to return to Winter River to organize a funeral for Charles Deetz, and Rory tags along like the irritable leech he is.
Betelgeuse’s Past, the Corpse Bride, and Wolf Jackson
In the afterlife, Betelgeuse is working at the afterlife call center department, handling requests for bio-exorcisms from ghosts around the world with a bunch of shrunken heads working for him, but the desire to return to the world of the living remains strong in him. In the Lost and Found department of afterlife, a ghostly janitor, played by Danny DeVito, causes an accident, which results in Delores, Betelgeuse’s terrifying ex-wife, getting awakened by assembling her severed body parts. As it turns out, during the Black Plague, Betelgeuse, a Spanish grave robber, came across a hauntingly beautiful Delores, and the duo tied the knot in an unholy union after falling for each other. Unbeknownst to Betelgeuse, Delores was part of a sinister cult of soul consumers who preyed on unsuspecting people in their effort to gain immortality, and Delores poisoned Betelgeuse for the same reason, to kill him before she could take his soul. However, a still conscious Betelgeuse took an axe and chopped up his wife in pieces before meeting his end from poisoning—and now awakened in afterlife, Delores seeks revenge on Betelgeuse. In search of her ex-husband, Delores wreaks havoc in the afterlife as she kills several spirits by taking their souls, prompting Wolf Jackson, the chief of the afterlife’s crime division, to leap into action.
Wolf Jackson, played by Willem Dafoe, is a new addition to the world of Betelgeuse, a 70s pulp crime thriller protagonist-inspired pastiche character who takes himself way too seriously and reminisces about the acting days of his past when he played the role of globetrotting spy Frank Hardballer. After learning about Delores’ killing spree, Jackson warns Betelgeuse about her.
Astrid Gets Trapped, and Mr. Juice is Let Loose
During Charles’ wake, Rory unexpectedly proposes to Lydia, and in the presence of a crowd, she has to begrudgingly accept his proposal. Rory fast-tracks the day of marriage to just a few days later, during Halloween eve, much to the dismay of Astrid, who despises Rory. For Astrid, Halloween used to be the best day of the year when she used to dress up with her parents, and now it will be tied to an infuriating memory of her mother’s marriage to a doofus. A dejected Astrid rides her bicycle to get away from the irritable situation and wanders through the streets of Winter River when she loses control of her bicycle and accidentally enters the Frazier residence, where she meets a teenager, Jeremy. Venting out her frustrations with Jeremy, Astrid finds some peace of mind, and the duo quickly hit it off. Jeremy invites her into his house during Halloween, and Astrid, who was looking for a chance to skip the wedding anyway, agrees to do so.
In the meantime, there is a sweet moment of bonding between Lydia and Delia, and given how terse their relationship was in the first movie, this seems like healthy growth on their part. Delia didn’t know how to connect with her eccentric, reserved teenage stepdaughter back then, and similarly, Lydia is finding it difficult as a mother to reconcile with her angsty daughter as well. Still, while looking through old family photos in the attic, showing Adam Maitland’s miniature model town to Astrid, Lydia manages to bond with Astrid for a while. However, seeing a flier with Betelgeuse’s advertisement on it, Lydia starts panicking and hurriedly takes Astrid out of the attic.
However, after learning about Lydia’s visions and fears, Rory decides to ignore her warning and calls out Betelgeuse’s name three times, which transports the duo to the miniature model town, right in front of the ‘Ghost with the Most’. Betelgeuse’s horrifying antics traumatize both of them, and somehow returning back to their former selves, Lydia decides to seal the room, leave the property at once, and sell off the house for good. Astrid stops her mother, mentioning that she’s been invited to Jeremy’s house for Halloween, and Lydia begrudgingly agrees to stay.
Astrid goes to Jeremy’s house for Halloween, and she learns that he is, in fact, a ghost—a discovery that shocks her as she realizes that Lydia’s afflictions and experiences weren’t fake. Jeremy asks for Astrid’s help to get his life back by traveling to the afterlife, and in exchange, he offers her a chance to reunite with her father, Richard, while they’re there. Astrid agrees, unaware of the fact that Jeremy plans to trade her life for his own, and adhering to his request, as she utters an incantation before stepping to the afterlife, Jeremy’s plan is set in motion. On the other hand, Lydia learns about Jeremy’s identity as a ghost, who had killed his own parents before dying himself in an accident—but she fails to reach the Frazier household in time to rescue Astrid. Out of option, a desperate Lydia summons Betelgeuse and asks for his help to rescue her daughter, who agrees on one condition: that Lydia marries him afterwards, which will not only break his curse and allow him to settle in the world of the living, but also help him to escape from his vengeful ex-wife, Delores.
Did Lydia Break the Curse of Betelgeuse?
In the afterlife, Astrid is captured by the afterlife operatives, and as part of the life-trade she unwittingly made, her spirit is to be sent to the Great Beyond, boarding the Soul Train. Realizing Jeremy’s betrayal too late, a helpless Astrid is taken to the Soul Train, and she catches a glimpse of the spirit of her father, Richard, working at the station as a clerk. Betelgeuse and Lydia arrive through a secret route, but the news of a mortal trespassing in the afterlife quickly reaches Wolf Jackson, who unleashes his Ghoul Squad to apprehend Betelgeuse and Lydia.
Lydia meets Astrid and makes an attempt to escape with her, only to fall to Saturn’s moon, a location outside the spacetime continuum where sandworms are seen lurking. Richard’s spirit rescues the duo, and a wholesome family reunion follows. Richard assures Lydia and Astrid that even though they weren’t able to reach him, he’d always watched over them—and requests them to let go of their past grievances. Having the chance to meet her father for the last time, Astrid is at peace, but learns that to get her mortal self-back, the life trade needs to be reversed. Betelgeuse takes care of that by sending Jeremy to the eternal flame of Hell, resulting in Astrid regaining her mortal form. Richard helps them to escape back to earth, and upon returning, Astrid reconciles with her mother.
In the meantime, a bunch of shrunken heads have entered the world of the living through the breach created by Betelgeuse, and a mortified Rory has hastily arranged his wedding with Lydia in the church. In her own unique way of processing the grief of Charles’ passing, Delia had arranged an Egyptian mourning ritual involving two asps; she accidentally dies after the asps turn out not to have been defanged and reaches the afterlife. Returning from afterlife, Lydia decides to go through with the wedding anyway, when Betelgeuse crashes the wedding at the last second, bringing Delia with him. As per the agreement Lydia had made to him, she has to marry Betelgeuse. Rory intervenes, and Betelgeuse doses him with truth serum to expose his true reason for marrying Lydia—to get the Deetz inheritance. Rory further reveals that he never believed in Lydia’s powers or paranormal activities to begin with, and it’s safe to say that their wedding is canceled.
An infuriated, vengeful Delores arrives at the church to take her revenge, and Astrid manages to summon a sandworm, which devours both her and Rory—thereby saving Betelgeuse in the process. The wedding ceremony of the dead commences as Betelgeuse recreates a morbid musical dream sequence with Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park” playing in the background. Wolf Jackson and his Ghoul Squad are the last ones among party-crashers who have arrived to take Betelgeuse and Lydia into custody for violating the afterlife code, but Betelgeuse manages to freeze Wolf and co.
Learning that Betelgeuse helped Lydia by going against the afterlife code, Astrid finds a loophole as she claims Betelgeuse’s agreement of marriage was never valid to begin with. Lydia utters Betelgeuse’s name three times to banish him to the afterlife once again; with him gone, Wolf and co. return to their usual selves. In line with the afterlife’s rules, Wolf has to take Delia’s spirit as well, and she takes her leave from Astrid and Lydia who learn about her accidental demise. However, in the afterlife, she is reunited with the half-shark-eaten remains of Charles’ spirit, much to her relief and delight.
For now, Betelgeuse is gone, but he continues to haunt Lydia’s dreams, as in the closing moments of the movie, she sees a prolonged nightmare of Astrid getting married and giving birth to a hell-spawn of Betelgeuse. Perhaps the scene acts as a foreshadowing that in the future, the Deetz family will once again summon the crazy ghost due to their compulsions, and he will not leave Lydia either in the world of the living or the afterlife.
