Beetlejuice Review

Beetlejuice is one of those movies I remember fondly, but I haven’t watched it in many years. I was terrified of it initially. It came out the year before I was born, and I probably first saw it when I was very young. As the years passed, I enjoyed it even more. It was a high point of my movie-watching experience in the later years of my childhood. I recently sat down to watch the film again for the first time in many years. That’s when I decided to conduct an in-depth review to see how it holds up over 30 years later.

Story

The premise of this film is simple, but I don’t recall many movies doing anything similar. The Maitlands, played by Geena Davis (Barbara) and Alec Baldwin (Adam), make a trip into town and have to swerve to avoid a dog. They end up crashing through the side of a bridge and flipping their car into the river. They come home and realize that they actually died in this accident and that they’re now ghosts. Seeing them trying to figure out what was happening was fun. They didn’t have any reflections, and attempts to leave the house had them in danger of being eaten by sandworms. It’s not often that you see death from the other side in movies or on TV. I always enjoy the director and writers’ vision when they approach it.

Handbook for the Recently Deceased

The Maitlands consult their Handbook for the Recently Deceased. This guide is one that I wish had been explored in more detail. I think they could have done some outlandish things with it. The handbook takes them to a waiting room of sorts for the dead. It has the worst case of bureaucratic incompetence I’ve ever seen in the world of the living.

They speak to a case worker who tells them they need to remain in the house for 125 years and that they need to get the Deetz family out on their own. It was entertaining to see that you still have to fill out paperwork and wait in long lines even after you die. I started to feel for the Maitlands. They just wanted to spend their eternity in the peaceful home they had built. You can sense that feeling of peril within them as they exhaust all their options to get back to some semblance of what they knew.

Characters

Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin play their characters so well that you hope they can find some peace in the afterlife as they did when they were alive. That hope is quickly crushed in the film when the Deetz family moves in. They changed everything about the house that the Maitlands had made a home. Catherine O’Hara plays Delia, a conceptual artist who is generally a nightmare. She’s the one who changes the house’s decor with her interior designer, Otho (Glenn Shadix), and drives both her husband, Charles (Jeffrey Jones), and daughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder), crazy. This leads to a few hilarious scenes from The Maitlands where they try to scare the family by staging a hanging, a beheading, and even putting blankets over their heads as ghosts. The blankets were the only thing that worked, as Lydia was the only one who could see them.

Lydia

Lydia, the goth teen daughter, forms a connection to Adam and Barbara after she realizes they’re ghosts and that this was their home. She tends to protect them as best as possible, attributing her ability to see them to her strange and unusual nature. Lydia was one of the standout performers in a stellar cast. You wanted to know what she would do or say next whenever she was on-screen. The evolution of Lydia’s character was enjoyable to watch. She became a much more open and interesting character with each new interaction with The Maitlands and, eventually, Beetlejuice. She was made to play this dark character with layers to her personality. It just fits. After living a stoic lifestyle, she finds peace with the Maitlands and begins to open up, embracing her uniqueness.

Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice was such an outrageous character, and, unfortunately, he wasn’t on screen for very long in the film. I think the film had to be set up contextually to make the story cohesive enough for audiences to understand. The issue with that is that the main attraction isn’t given much to do until the mid-to-late parts of the film. Michael Keaton knocks it out of the park with this role.

Beetlejuice is a perverted, evil little man, and nothing seems to be off-limits with him. He made every moment he had on screen memorable and created a timeless character that people talked about long before the sequel was even considered. There’s something to be said about that. I thought there was so much more to explore with his character. This is someone who has been isolated for years and is just looking for a way out, for someone to bring him back. He’s boisterous and eccentric, but there’s much more depth to explore.

Effects

I didn’t feel like many stop-motion effects stood the test of time, especially watching it in 4K, where every detail is much easier to see. It didn’t detract too much from the movie, but it was noticeable. If anything, it gives the film a certain charm that takes you back to a different time. If it fits in any movie, it fits in a Tim Burton film. Plenty of characters are also torn right out of a twisted imagination. The dead have jobs, and you’ll see all types of those who have passed on performing those jobs in various scenes in the movie. None of this feels unsettling, and the “normal” stuff becomes more bothersome. I think that’s what makes this movie’s presence and longevity so fascinating. It thrives in making the strange feel oddly comforting.

Final Thoughts

The film’s conclusion occurs relatively quickly, and although I liked it, I felt it could have been expanded upon a bit. Everything gets wrapped up well, although a few doors remain open. It was a movie that I don’t believe particularly needed a sequel, but I’m excited to see what they can do with today’s technology for a film like this in the recently released sequel in theaters. Beetlejuice has aged pretty well since 1988, and if you plan on seeing the sequel, you should check out the characters’ origins. It’s worth watching.