Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review - 'like a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon'

“The afterlife is so random,” says a character in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice after stepping through a door and landing on one of Saturn’s moons. The same might be said of Tim Burton’s belated sequel to 1988’s Beetlejuice, the surprise supernatural-themed hit that confirmed Burton as a commercially viable director (his next movie was Batman) and helped make stars of Michael Keaton and a then-16-year-old Winona Ryder. 

Both actors return for this long-in-the-works follow-up, which, like the first film, operates almost like a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon for the Halloween set, replete with zany set-pieces, funhouse-style set design and 12A-suitable gore. Unlike the first film – which revolved around a newly dead couple who call on the services of Keaton’s sleazy “bioexorcist” Beetlegeuse to help them get rid of the noxious family that has moved into their house – it also comes with a surfeit of unnecessary subplots designed to justify the revival of a 36-year-old movie that wasn’t exactly begging for a sequel in the first place. 

Thus we have a very convoluted story in which Ryder’s goth girl, Lydia Deetz, has grown up to become the successful host of a paranormal reality TV show, much to the embarrassment of her own daughter Astrid (Wendesday’s Jenna Ortega), whose teenage angst is fuelled by her mother’s ability to commune with any dead person except Astrid’s own deceased father.

Meanwhile, Lydia’s grasp on reality is becoming a little shaky too, having become involved with her odious producer (Justin Theroux), who’s gaslighting her in ways that are obvious to everyone but her. When her now-very-successful artist stepmother (Catherine O’Hara, reviving her role from the first film) informs her that Lydia’s father has been killed in a ridiculously bloody way, they decide to return to Winter River, the sleepy setting of the first film, for the funeral.

At which point you might start asking yourself: what about the main character whose misspelled name is repeated twice in the title? Keaton’s Beetleguese is, apparently, still pining for Lydia, and the imminent funeral of her father is just the opening he needs to wile his way back into her life, something given more urgency by the fact that his mutilated, soul-sucking ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) is stalking him in the afterlife, hungry for revenge.

As previously mentioned, it’s all pretty random and Burton might have been better excising a lot of the aforementioned family stuff in favour of the supernatural shenanigans of its main character. These, at least, provide us with Bellucci, whose entrance into the film – a deliciously over-the-top homage to classic monster movies – is one of the best things Burton has done in years. Keaton, too, slips back into his role with aplomb, recapturing the ribald stand-up persona of this “trickster demon” (as Lydia describes him) with a vigour that sends the film off the rails in some pleasingly anarchic ways. 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in cinemas now