Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Disclaimer: in the following review I’ll be careful not to say "Beetlejuice" three times, in the slightest chance he comes back and they make another sequel.

Tim Burton revisits his earliest creation, resurrecting Beetlejuice after leaving the smirky demon in the afterlife waiting room for 36 years. Some of the original cast returns to reprise their characters, with a now grown up Wynona Ryder and the evergreen Michael Keaton in the titular role, and introducing to the Connecticut small town the director’s new discovery Jenna Ortega as well as his new girlfriend, Monica Bellucci. This is a nostalgic ode to the past, but time is not forgiving, and Burton’s “dark” trademark now seems like a faded murk.

Shot in an eccentued TV style, permeated by drone shots and close ups, the movie borrows a lot from modern series like Stranger Things and Burton’s very own Wednesday, leaving little of the original flick’s spirit. The 1988 cult has at its core a simple and imaginative idea, subverting the norms: the living haunting the ghosts. This straightforwardness allowed for the director’s quirky aesthetic to emerge without overshadowing its plot and characters, and eventually leading to a harmony that only good movies can provide. The sequel, however, does the exact opposite, stitching together an overcomplicated, self-referential pastiche, at times gratuitous fan service, at other times for the director’s sole entertainment.

Lots of predictable threads eventually only muddle the chaotic plot. The only time the film shows some inventiveness is to include the character of the late Charles Deetz without calling back Jeffrey Jones (now a blacklisted pedophile), by using only the bottom half of the body and through an abhorrent animation sequence, which is so ugly to possibly be the film most horrific moment.

What was dark comedy is now a kitsch attempt to scavenger for humour in any macabre corner, but the only real zombie is here Tim Burton himself, whose so called style has decomposed far too long ago.