Director: Tim Burton
I watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice last weekend in the cinema, in the D-BOX experience, which was the first time I watched a film like that. It goes without saying I loved having my chair shake every time something happened in the movie. As for the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice story, after a family tragedy, members of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Lydia (Winona Ryder), a broadcaster who sees ghosts has her world turned upside down since Beetlejuice still haunts her, and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) opens doors to the afterlife.
This is the second film about Beetlejuice, following a 1988 hit film with a Beetlejuice demon whose name cannot be said three times, or he turns up and wreaks havoc on the Deetz family, who purchased a ghost house. Whilst the Deetz family was initially the focus, their daughter Lydia (young Winona Ryder) sees ghosts who increasingly take an interest in her. Winona Ryder was brilliant in that film, and she is brilliant in this new iteration where she shows a slightly neurotic and shaky version of a ghost and paranormal investigator and TV host. In this film, the havoc is predominantly centred on Beetlejuice with his first wife waking up from permanently dead and haunting him in the afterworld trying to kill him by also sucking his soul out (in real life, as we learnt, she poisoned him on their wedding night).
I am aware of the popular significance of the 1988 Beetlejuice film and the fact that the film entered popular talk and is referenced in popular culture, e.g., in Big Bang Theory when Sheldon has a hissy fit and won’t go to Raj to eat with his friends, who excessively talk about him when he eventually knocks calling ‘all my friends’ whilst knocking, Howard asks if he is a Beetlejuice. There were other references too, which were then incorporated into advertising the current Beetlejuice Beetlejuice film,
But I never liked the first film and thought there was too much over-acting, which I generally do not like. There is indeed over-acting in this new Beetlejuice film, but less so, and there is also a story of motherhood and differences underneath the afterlife/demon story because Lydia struggled with parenting Astrid, particularly since Astrid does not believe in ghosts and thinks her mother is an embarrassment. Astrid also disagrees with her mother’s life choices, such as meeting another man, because Astrid sees exploitation and there is also a story of grieving after a father and resenting her mother for moving on plus seeing all ghosts other than Astrid’s father. Therefore, I enjoyed this film more than the first one. Not sure I would necessarily recommend it to anyone though and I am unsure whether fans of the first film will like this new version, or they will find it underwhelming. I watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice because this is what is available in the cinema right now, if there was something indie, I would have preferred that. But anyway, it was a much better experience than expected.
Thank you for reading!