SPOILER WARNING: The following review contains plot spoilers for the 2024 movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” 

On Sep. 6, 2024, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”—the sequel to Beetlejuice (1988)—was released in theaters, 36 years after the first movie debuted. While the casting of Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz (teenage daughter of Lydia Deetz) helped draw newcomers to the franchise, this highly anticipated sequel failed to live up to the thrill of the original.  

The cult classic “Beetlejuice” was a box office hit, grossing $84.6 million with a $15 million budget. Director Tim Burton’s distinctively dark-and-whimsical-yet-surreal visual style has led him to win several awards for “Beetlejuice” including an Academy Award for Best Makeup and a Saturn award for Best Horror film. Beetlejuice has received acclaim from movie critics everywhere, with 7.5/10 on IMDb and 83% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The original “Beetlejuice” follows the Deetz family, who buys a house in Winter River, Connecticut, only for it to be haunted by a ghost couple called the Maitlands. Lydia Deetz, the gothic teenage daughter, befriends the Maitlands, who are desperate to get her family out of their home. They then come across an advertisement for Betelgeuse, a ghostly figure specializing in “bio-exorcism.” Little do they know the true motive of Betelgeuse, a cunning trickster with dark humor, is to marry Lydia, so that he can remain in the mortal world, creating chaos for both the Deetz and Maitland families and taking them on a wild adventure through the afterlife.   

Several cast members of Beetlejuice (1988) reprise their iconic roles in the sequel, such as Michael Keaton (Betelgeuse), Winona Ryder (Lydia Deetz), and Catherine O’Hara (Delia Deetz). In addition, notable stars join the Beetlejuice franchise such as Jenna Ortega (Astrid Deetz), Monica Bellucci (Delores), Willem Dafoe (Wolf Jackson), and Danny Devito (Unnamed Afterlife Janitor). 

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” revolves around the rocky relationship between the now middle-aged Lydia and her daughter Astrid. Although Astrid is made to seem like a copy of her mother in her teen years, they’re not similar at all. Astrid is just a typical moody teen who loves to find reasons to hate her mom—an act that gets tiring after a while. Astrid is embarrassed by Lydia because of her reputation as a kooky, paranoid lady whose life is controlled by a fear of the supernatural. However, in the first movie, Lydia shows no signs of being bothered by the Maitlands or Betelgeuse. In fact, she seems to prefer the mystery of the supernatural world over her unsatisfying life in the physical one. Because of this, her sudden change in character is hard to justify.

After the death of Lydia’s dad, Charles Deetz, three generations of Deetz women return to the house in Winter River, including Lydia’s stepmother and Charles’s widow, Delia Deetz. Though Lydia is supposedly haunted by her memories of Betelgeuse, the family stays in the house after the funeral because Astrid had made plans with a boy she’d met hours earlier. In Winter River, we get a closer look at the Deetz’s strained family dynamics.  

Meanwhile, Betelgeuse is still on his quest to marry Lydia to escape his ex-wife, a zombie corpse named Delores, whose character has no major impact on the rest of the story or the protagonists’ lives. The conflict between her and Betelgeuse is one viewers couldn’t care less about.  

The main conflict only comes into play halfway through the film when Astrid opens a door to the afterlife and ends up stranded there, leaving Lydia no choice but to summon Betelgeuse and ask for his help getting her daughter back. The reason Astrid decides to head to the afterlife in the first place is for a chance to see her deceased father, the root cause of the resentment she feels toward her mom. Astrid’s dad is supposedly the only ghost Lydia can’t see (no explanation is offered as to why that is).  

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” also has a few callbacks to its predecessor. During their trip to the afterlife, Lydia and Astrid find themselves running for their lives from the same sandworms that Betelgeuse used to scare away the Deetz family from Winter River in the first installment. These sandworms later swallowed Delores and Lydia’s fiancé, Rory, whole.  In another nostalgic moment, Delia wakes up in the same iconic waiting room—the place you wake up in after you die—the Maitlands find themselves in the first installment after a ceremony involving a pair of snakes at Charles’s grave goes wrong. When Delia eventually comes to terms with her death and is about to board the Soul Train, she’s finally reunited with a decapitated Charles, whose death the movie explains through stop motion.  

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has also been a box office success, grossing $376.7 million so far on a budget of $100 million. However, it hasn’t quite met the same stardom as the original. The original cult classic has consistently higher reviews across all movie critic services such as IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Letterboxd. 

Despite the impressive acting and stunning visuals, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” has too many plotlines irrelevant to the main conflict. Just as Lydia profits off her past with her supernatural TV talk show, “Ghost House,” Tim Burton is cashing in on the success of his original masterpiece by creating an unnecessary mess of a sequel.  

That being said, the film might be worth watching for some avid fans of the original. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” still captures the eerie and whimsical atmosphere of the first movie that Tim Burton is known for.

To summon Betelgeuse, you need to say his name three times, suggesting that the franchise may not have ended just yet. All we can hope for is that the unofficially announced but hinted at “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” does justice to the original.