Smoke Signals

The juice is loose in this brand new 2024 sequel: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! This horror comedy movie picks up years after the original left off. Even though its predecessor came out in 1988, it still holds up to this day. Director Tim Burton definitely has not lost his spark for creating movies after all these years in his professional career! Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been a success for old-time fans and new viewers.

This movie features many big actors such as: Winona Ryder, Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Danny Devito, and of course Beetlejuice himself, Micheal Keeton. All of these actors played their parts in the movie wonderfully. Keeping the same main actors from the originals while adding some new actors was a well-thought-out choice. The new actors filled their roles perfectly in the Beetlejuice universe. A new actor that played their part very well is Jenna Ortega: she was able to capture the right amount of goth and angst that Winona Ryder portrayed in the original movie. She was the perfect person to cast as Lydia Deetz’s daughter. The costumes, effects, CGI, and movie sets were amazingly done and captured the same vibe that its predecessor had!

Even though this movie has many good things, there are some problems with it. The movie starts a bit slow but reels you when the action starts to pick up. There were new characters that were introduced that didn’t feel as needed as others. Beetlejuice’s ex-wife, for instance, was an unnecessary character who was only there to move the movie along faster and be able to wrap up the main conflict at the end. Other than those two points, she did not have much screen time and I forgot about her until someone brought her up.

Another character that didn’t do much other than cause a conflict that needed to be fixed was Jeremy – the boy Astrid meets while riding her bike. He didn’t serve any other purpose than to create suspense, shock the watchers, and create a conflict. I also forgot about him a majority of the way into the movie. These two characters did seem unimportant at first until you think about how they needed a driving force to move the movie along, and in those terms, I wouldn’t have anything bad to say about them.

Overall, the movie was a fun and wacky ride that was fun and nostalgic from start to finish! I would absolutely recommend the movie to anyone who enjoys a horror comedy movie that mainly focuses on comedy or if they like the strange and unusual. I would definitely give Beetlejuice Beetlejuice a 4/5 star rating!

As Lydia Deetz said, “I would rather live in the present, than be haunted by the past.” So, don’t be haunted by the fact you didn’t see the movie – go and give it a watch!