It's Always Showtime

1988's Beetlejuice is unique blend of visual style, humour, lite horror, performance and trappings of the decade. How to recreate this is a question sequel Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice doesn't even try to answer. Instead it throws its weird and wonderful characters into as many chaotic scenarios as Tim Burton and team can think of and do so at such a manic pace that the viewer doesn't have time to think if they are enjoying it as much. Thanks to the amount of talent on display, this method ends up working a treat.

The story begins with Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz, now the star of a TV show where she contacts the dead, receiving the news that her father has died. Consequently, she reunites with step mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) for a memorial service come art project back at the old family home. Accompanying the returning cast members are Lydia's daughter Jenna Ortega and new partner Justin Theroux. Ghostly couple Gina Davis and Alec Baldwin are no longer in residence (a throwaway line is all the explanation we get) but Beetlejuice is still periodically skulking around their model village with designs on reuniting with his former bride to be.

From there things move at a break-neck pace with subplots galore; Rider and Theroux have an upcoming wedding, Ortega meets a mysterious love interest in the village while butting heads with her mother and mourning her deceased father, O'Hara is doing her weird art stuff, Beetlejuice's ex wife is after him and sucking souls in the process, we follow an afterlife cop who was given the job because he played one on TV when alive. It's a lot to cram into a movie that comes in around 100 mins but it manages to accommodate it all effortlessly by adopting a dream like story structure where things just happen when they need to, regardless of logic. The rules you established in the first film getting in your way? Ignore them. Inconvenient for Beetlejuice to be on screen? Have him go to the "little boys room". Need people to handily be in the same place as each other? Make it so. The result is a story that doesn't quite hold together but it doesn't really matter, in fact it just adds to the surreal vibe of proceedings.

And surreal it is. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice may be even weirder than its predecessor with animated sequences, black and white golden age of horror homages and musical interludes.The events are equally dark but the tone is lighter, offering a pretty flippant attitude towards life and death, and it airs more on the side of out and out comedy. The unique vibe it creates allows the film to get away the things that often derail nostalgia sequels. All the call backs and fan service lines are here but worn lightly enough that it feels like they are added in the spirit of fun rather than as a painfully wedged in studio mandate. Like in say, the last Ghostbusters film. Even adding in a Beetlejuice origin story doesn't poison the well as it's done flippantly and pretty hilariously.

The returning cast slip effortlessly back into their roles and the new additions fit the world perfectly. Willem Dafoe's Hollywood cop is a blast and Justin Theroux has a great time as the slimily over-earnest new man is Lydia's life. Is Monica Bellucci here so that Burton can indulge his Frankenstein's Bride fetish by dressing up his latest partner as a hot zombie? Maybe, but it's never a bad to have Monica Bellucci in your film. We are even treated to a Danny DeVito appearance.

It's still Micheal Keaton's show of course and he doesn't miss a beat slipping back into the skin of the "bio exorcist". Wisely, he doesn't get much more screen time than he did back in 1988, keeping his impact at maximum. The film makers also avoid the trap of turning him into a good guy, however much he aids the rest of the cast we are left in doubt that allowing him to stay in the world of the living would be a disaster. He plays the hits from the first movie while adding in some new tricks and it always feels the film picks up a notch when he is on screen, which is as it should be.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice really has no right to exist. Fortunately, it feels like it was born out of a bunch of friends desire to hang out and make something fun rather than an executive's bean counting. It may be much messier than its predecessor but it is often funny and always creative. So much fun I wouldn't even mind if they decided to let the juice loose a third time.

8 Asps de-fanged out of 10.

Comments

Irreverent Evil

Despite its singular name, Resident Evil is actually the eighth film to be based on the long running video game franchise. Unlike Paul W.S. Anderson's decade plus running series and 2021's failed reboot, Welcome to Raccoon City, this new effort from Weapons helmer Zach Cregger uses none of the game's characters or plot lines. Ironically, ditching the baggage has allowed Cregger to craft something that comes much closer to matching the camp terror of its source material and is easily the best film to wear the Resident Evil name. The entire film follows medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams) on the delivery from hell. Despite being in the middle of a phone argument with his pregnant girlfriend, Brian accepts one last job for the day; a drop-off in remote Raccoon City. The icy roads he is ill prepared for turn out to be the least of his worries as something has gone very wrong in the mountain city. After running a woman over in the town outskirts, things quickly escalated and...

An Apple a Day

Bad Apples opens with a colourful procession of apples making their way through a processing facility. There is a problem, though: stowing away is a solitary child's trainer, hidden amongst the apples and about to jam up the machine and bring the whole enterprise to a halt. Turns out a bad kid can do the same to a classroom, as poor Miss Maria Spencer (Saoirse Ronan) knows only too well. This darkly comic satire doesn't go much deeper than the above metaphor but it entertains and is propelled by a trio of strong performances. The offending trainer belongs to Danny (Eddie Waller), a disruptive pupil whose out of control behaviour has the timid Maria on the verge of losing her job. When Danny seriously injures another pupil and gets suspended, Maria goes to see his dad but ends up in a scuffle with the troublemaking youngster that leads to her imprisoning him in her basement. With the rascal out of the picture and nobody missing him much, things start to look pretty rosy for t...

Straight Outta The Further

Insidious has always been a fairly low tier horror franchise. The Conjuring's budget cousin, if you will. If you look at it that way then Insidious: Out of the Further is actually fairly good. It's certainly the most entertaining the series has been since the first instalment. Like that first breakout hit from back in 2010, Out of the Further has a much stronger first half than it does second. We start with a fairly harrowing scene of a young girl named Gemma witnessing the grisly death of her erratically behaving mother. We then fast forward a couple of decades to find the adult Gemma working as a dentist while raising a young girl of her own, yet still living in her childhood home. Spooky things begin to happen as some unfriendly OAPs start stalking the neighbourhood and Gemma tries to keep her daughter safe while worrying she is becoming like her mother. In typical Insidious fashion, things become more silly than scary as the plot is revealed and we build towards a ludicr...

Summer of 75

Tony opens with a quote from the late chef, and subject of this semi-biopic, Anthony Bourdain's memoir. It goes: "I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking." He's not wrong. The Tony (he's much too cool to let people call him Anthony) we meet at the beginning of the film is an insufferable blowhard. He tells anyone who'll listen about his great future as a writer, despite seemingly having an aversion to doing any actual writing. He assumes the panel awarding a prestigious scholarship is too stupid to see his pitch is nonsense bravado. He condescendingly explains the meaning of what he thinks are obscure words, despite not always knowing himself. While he does change over the course of the film, it's hard to map an actual character journey. That's because more than a biopic or chef's origin story, Tony is a summer vibes hangout movie. The story take...

2025 Movies Ranked

Another year in the rear view mirror means another ranking of every new release film I caught in the cinema this year. Despite 75 films making the list there are some fairly big omissions so if your favourite isn't on here, just imagine it up near the top. Also, we are talking UK releases. 75. The Stranger Chapter 2 This lame duck franchise props up the rankings for the second year in a row. A little more happens this time round but there is no jeopardy since we know the protagonist needs to make it to part 3. Also undermines its main premise (people might just decide to murder you for no reason) by giving the masked killers backstory. At least a section with a wild boar trying to gut somebody means the audience aren't the only ones nearly bored to death. 74. Hurry Up Tomorrow When a musician decides to write and star in their own movie the results are often pompus nonsense, so the problem with this effort from Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye isn't that its ridiculous...

Hell to Pay

They Will Kill You begins with a soaking wet Zazie Beetz waiting to start her maid job at swanky apartment building, The Virgil. Her character Asia is a former convict who has no idea her new employers are devil worshipers who sacrifice their staff to Lucifer. The building residents have no idea that Asia is actually there for reasons other than a steady paycheque and is not about to go gently into that good night. The touch paper is soon lit on a relentless blend of slapstick horror action that leaves little room for you to catch your breath across its ninety minute odd runtime. The most obvious comparison here is to 2019's Ready or Not and its sequel (which coincidentally released one week before this film), where an unsuspecting bride is left fighting for her life when her wealthy in-laws opt to make her a human sacrifice. While They Will Kill You shares that movie's comedic spirit we are much deeper into supernatural territory here. The grand old building and seemingly ...

Lungbuster

With Iron Lung, YouTuber Markiplier, real name Mark Fischbach, becomes the latest content creator to dip his toe into the world of feature film production. His effort is not as accomplished as the work of the Philippou Brothers (creators of Talk to Me and Bring Her Back) but it's a lot more striking and original than last year's Shelby Oaks (directed by YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann). The film is based on a relatively niche video game of the same name, which was made by solo developer David Szymanski (who helped with the film's screenplay) and is set inside a submarine exploring an ocean of blood. We follow exactly the same premise here as our protagonist, a convict named Simon, spends the entire runtime welded into a decrepit submersible on a distant moon trying to earn his freedom. What his superiors are specifically looking for is unclear but he is told the blood ocean holds resources vital to the survival of mankind, who has been pushed to the brink of extinctio...

Thunderbolts and Lightning, Mental Health is Frightening*

Thunderbolts* takes a bunch of relatively minor MCU characters and scoops them up into a "Suicide Squad" type adventure where they face off against insurmountable odds. Given most of the characters have appeared in TV shows, there is a distinct whiff of Disney+ about proceedings but it is also one of the most solid films Marvel has put out in years. The execs must have known they had something decent on their hands as they waited until a whole weekend after release to spoil the end twist with marketing, as appose to doing it in the trailers. The titular Thunderbolts are : New Black Widow, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), failed Captain America replacement John Walker (Wyatt Russell), former Winter Soldier turned congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Russian super soldier and Yelena's adoptive father Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ant Man 2 alumni Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and maybe mysterious newcomer Bob (Lewis Pullman). If you follow MCU events you will recognise ...

Stars and Their Cars

Crime 101 is named for the California freeway one of the characters commits all his robberies along. It also doubles as describing his MO, he is successful because he makes sure he gets the fundamentals right every time. It can also describe the film itself, which nails the basics of making a slick crime thriller better than just about any other movie has in quite some time. The professional thief is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), a meticulous planner whose jobs never lead to anyone being hurt and are so well executed that nobody even has any idea they are all the work of one man. Nobody that is, except for Mark Ruffalo's Detective Lou Lubesnick, who is determined to catch the "101 Robber" even though his obsession is starting to lead to him being ostracised in the precinct. Both characters come into contact with high value insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry) as Mike plans a big score and Lou joins the dots in an attempt to track him down. A potential fly in the ointmen...

Eight is the Loneliest Number of Legs

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into cinemas to deliver a much needed box office shot in the arm to the once invincible MCU and prove that the wall crawler is Marvel's most enduring hero. It delivers on the Spiderman feeling but loses steam as the 2 hour 20 minute runtime rolls on. Since everyone he cares about is either dead or has forgotten him after the events of No Way Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been focusing solely on his Spider-Man duties. As a result, he has more or less eradicated organised crime in New York and is idolised by the city populace. On the downside, he is devoid of real human contact apart from phone calls to a detective and a grudging pseudo-friendship with gun toting vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), aka The Punisher. He still pines after his lost relationships with MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) and it seems his isolation is beginning to have a physical effect on him. This couldn't come at a worse time, with a new threat that can s...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog