“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” 4K UHD Review

After a family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her teenage daughter, Astrid, accidentally opens the portal to the Afterlife. (from IMDB)

The 80s were a wild time, that’s for sure. In 1988, you still couldn’t quite trust a PG rating. Tim Burton’s spooky afterlife comedy, Beetlejuice, won over fans of all ages, but the things that guy got away with under the PG banner still surprises me to this day. Burton’s penchant for the macabre came out in full force in that film, and has only been seen again in his movies from time to time since (showing up to some degree in movies like Dark Shadows and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, to name a couple). Beetlejuice centered on a married couple who die suddenly in a car wreck and find themselves living as ghosts, trapped in their house. (Which allows for some truly gruesome visuals as they try to scare people out of the house.) When a new family comes moving in, they end up seeking the help of a mischievous ghoul named Beetlejuice who ends up causing all kinds of mayhem in the process. The film has since become a cult classic, especially around Halloween, and it’s surprising that it never saw a theatrical sequel given its popularity, despite spawning an animated series for television in 1989.

36 years later, Tim Burton returns to the director’s chair for the franchise’s first sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. This time, instead of focusing on the ghosts of Barbara and Adam Maitland, the story revolves around the family that had moved into the house after their deaths, the Deetz family. Winona Ryder starred in the first movie as the family’s young daughter, Lydia Deetz, at just 16 years old. With Ryder’s renewed popularity in recent years due to the runaway success of Netflix’s Stranger Things (as Joyce Byers), it seems more than appropriate to have a sequel follow her character as an adult. Now in her early 50s, Lydia has a daughter – played appropriately by Wednesday‘s Jenna Ortega – who thinks her mom’s ability to see ghosts is a fraud, especially since Lydia can’t see the ghost of her husband, who tragically passed away at sea. When Lydia’s father, Charles Deetz, suddenly passes away, the family reunites at the Maitland house where Lydia finds herself being haunted by the memory of Beetlejuice.

The original film had a pretty simple, straight-forward plot, with everything kept mostly inside the Maitland house, or in the world of the afterlife. This time around, the world for the Deetz family feels broader, and the sequel feels much more modern and adapted for a 2024 audience. Still, the world of Beetlejuice is true to the original film, and Burton goes out of his way to recapture the look and feel of the 1988 entry – using mostly practical effects and even some stop motion animation (for the sandworms). And this time around, the story feels more fleshed out and intricate than the first one had. Burton dives right in, continuing to explore the world of the afterlife he first created over 30 years ago. When I revisited the first film before seeing the new one, I was surprised at how little screentime Beetlejuice had in the original. In fact, he barely appears on screen till about halfway through the movie. If you were hoping for more of Keaton’s quirky performance, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice delivers on that. There are also quite a few new characters introduced for this installment, in addition to Ortega’s Astrid, including Justin Theroux as a smarmy love interest for Lydia; Willem Dafoe as a deceased actor who thinks he’s a real grisled cop; Arthur Conti as a friend of Astrid (who totally channels Steve from Stranger Things), and Monica Belluci as a scorned former lover of Beetlejuice. It’s a solid ensemble – something Burton seems to excel at assembling for his movies.

Now, the content… Again, I was surprised at how rough the original was when I rewatched it. I had seen it a few times as a kid, and I remembered things about it – even after having not seen it for probably a couple decades – that terrified me as a kid and really stuck with me. In that film, while the Maitlands try to scare off the Deetz’s, Barbara literally rips her face off to reveal a skull and bulging eyes that pop out of her eye sockets at one point. Another time, the couple holds their decapitated heads in their own hands, with bloody results. Later, they try to make themselves look scarier by sticking their hands in their mouths and stretching their faces into dramatically elongated forms that are especially terrifying to younger eyes. It’s just not a movie for kids. In the new film, you can expect a lot more to be shown along those lines… but gorier. Granted, all of the gross-out visuals and gore is done in a stylistic, semi-cartoony way, but it’s nonetheless gruesome. For example, since ghosts appear just as they were when they died, we see a man missing his head and most of his shoulders with his body shaped like a shark bit the top half of him off. Many times, we see this person’s body walking around, with blood spurting out of a tube in the center of the meaty wound when he talks out of it. Another scene has Beetlejuice asking Lydia and Rory to “spill their guts” during a therapy session, and then offers to go first. We then see bluish-green liquid and balloon-like intestines spew out from his belly in exaggerated fashion. In the same scene, he makes Lydia “pregnant” just by speaking it, and we see her belly grow really fast until she suddenly gives birth. A creepy Beetlejuice-baby – even clothed in his signature striped suit – emerges from her and begins gnawing on her leg (which we see close up), causing little bloody teeth marks on her leg. In another sequence, a woman’s body parts fall out of a series of boxes and each piece of flesh is shown to have a red, meaty side where it was once connected together before apparently being hacked apart. She then literally pulls herself together, piece by piece, and staples the pieces onto herself (which is also shown in close-up). It’s an awkwardly long sequence, too. Another dead character has part of their head missing, so we see their exposed brain and some ligaments on the side of their face in many scenes throughout the film. And there are plenty more gross or violent moments played for shock and laughs. Sure, some of it is pretty clever and sometimes amusing, but it’s also mostly gross, too. Another dead person is shown with fish stuck to his skin (and they wiggle in place), with pieces of flesh missing all over his face and hands — and even his neck appears to have been ripped up with a fish burrowed inside.

All of this is to say… Tim Burton certainly went “Full Burton” on this film, and it’s more than evident. Fans of the first one will either love it or find it to be too much when it comes to the shocking sights, but anyone who loves horror films and gore will likely find this to be no big deal. The film’s villain is also a “soul sucker,” so we see them breathe in the lifeforce of its deceased victims and these victims then collapse into a rubbery shell of a body (like an empty full-body Halloween costume) and fall to the ground. While the darkness of the supernatural facets of the story don’t specifically address demons (Lydia refers to Beetlejuice as a demon, but we find out his backstory as a human in this film) or the occult. Hell is implied as a firey pit – which we do see a person fall into at one point – but there isn’t really anything that references the Christian belief system. Still, those sensitive to any tales regarding ghosts or the afterlife probably will want to avoid this movie (and its predecessor).

Aside from quite a few gruesome visuals (as touched on above), there is some profanity in the film, too, including one clear use of the “F” word and another curiously bleeped-out use of it. (The first, PG-rated, movie used the “F” word once as well, so this isn’t too surprising.) There is also a bunch of uses of the “S” word and a few uses of blasphemy. Sexual content isn’t too graphic, but a flashback to a character’s wedding night, while it is being described in a suggestive way, shows two people embracing and then we see their shadows on the wall literally tearing clothes off each other as they get intimate. Beetlejuice also makes some suggestive remarks, as usual, and Delia makes a comment about birds mating (because of Charles being a birder) and refers to it as them “doing it” on a beach.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel that has been a long time coming, and it’s probably one of the better “legacy” sequels of titles from the 80’s to come around in recent years as well. However, given the nature of the original film’s afterlife subject matter, and Tim Burton’s love for gross-out, or straight-up gruesome, visuals, this film – like its original – is certainly an acquired taste. Fans of the original should be relatively satisfied, but those sensitive to this kind of subject matter will definitely want to steer clear of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

– John DiBiase (reviewed: 9/6/24)

 

Considering the “legacy” of the 80’s classic horror comedy, Beetlejuice, it should come as no surprise that it’s long-awaited sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice comes home with a hearty helping of spooky special features to honor the franchise. Along with a 4K UHD disc and MoviesAnywhere digital copy, the 4K set includes these extras:

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 4K UHD – It’s kind of up-in-the-air as far as what new movies these days will impress or feel average when it comes to the 4K transfer. Unsurprisingly, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice looks truly excellent in 4K UHD. The color is vibrant and the picture is ultra clear. Before checking out Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘s transfer, I watched an older film from the late 1950’s that had just been given its first 4K treatment, and it looked quite fantastic. However, jumping from that right into Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just showed how much modern films can bring to the format (and vice versa). If you’re a 4K fan, you really can’t go wrong with the transfer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Special Features

Movie with ASL (1:44:46) – This just might be the first time I’ve ever seen this on a movie release. For an American Sign Language aided version of viewing the film, a person is shown in the lower righthand corner of the screen throughout the duration of the movie, acting it out with sign language for the hearing impaired. Honestly, I think it’s a pretty cool idea and a different way to offer up a viewing experience than just the usual subtitles.

The Juice is Loose!: The Making of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (27:38) – This is a pretty thorough making-of featurette that spotlights director Tim Burton talking about making the first movie in the 80s and what that experience was like. Apparently, the idea for a sequel had been kicked around and talked about for decades, but it never felt like the right time to Tim – until now. They finally decided to do a sequel while Burton was working on the set of the Netflix show Wednesday. For making the first follow-up movie, they wanted to go back to the roots of how they made the first movie, and aim to do as much practically in-camera as possible. Some time is focused on how they filmed Beetlejuice’s flashback scene, specifically inspired by “Italian horror” movies. They also touch on the whole Soul Train sequence, and how it was inspired by the TV show, and then they talk about returning to filming on location in Vermont after they left the stage shoots in London. The cast and crew frequently gush about how special it was to return to this cinematic world, to be together again, and to even shoot on location in Vermont again.

The Ghost with the Most: Beetlejuice Returns! (8:34) is about Tim Burton and Michael Keaton revisiting the character after all these years. They talk about originally creating him and how the first film involved a great deal of improv. The cast and crew talk about working with both Tim and Michael, and what it was like to act opposite Michael as Beetlejuice. They also talk about updating the character’s look and makeup for today’s high-def viewing world. (1 “h*ll”)

Meet the Deetz (6:52) is about bringing the Deetz family back together again. Burton explains that he was most interested in exploring Lydia’s life now as an adult, as well as her own mother-daughter relationship with her daughter, Astrid. They talk about welcoming Jenna Ortega into the fold, and she talks about wanting to not just copy what Winona Ryder did with young Lydia in the original movie.

Shrinkers, Shrinkers Everywhere! (6:27) is dedicated to the shrunken-head characters seen in the afterlife. Tim Burton loved the character in the first movie so much he wanted more of them in the sequel. The crew talk about creating the look of the characters using practical effects, and how real actors are buried underneath the suits with the little heads on top being powered by animatronics.

An Animated Afterlife: The Stop-Motion Art of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (9:15) – Director Tim Burton has always had a love for stop-motion animation, and utilized it to some degree in the original movie. For this one, they created a sequence involving a plane crash, and they talk about how they planned out the unique passengers for the flight, as well as the Jaws-inspired shark that the victims encounter in the ocean. The focus then shifts to the iconic Sandworm from the first movie and what it was like to recreate it for this sequel.

The Handbook for the Recently Deceased (12:08) is dedicated to all the different ghosts seen in the afterlife and all the unique ways they had died. They talk about the makeup effects and designing the ideas for each unique death. Danny DeVito opens the segment (and closes it), talking about his cameo, all while wearing his creepy blue makeup. The segment covers the creation of Baby Beetlejuice, how they did the practical effect of his birth out of Lydia, Beetlejuice literally spilling his guts, his ex-wife’s graphic “rebirth,” and how they collapsed the souls that she consumes. There are some pretty gruesome visuals in this segment, so if the grossest aspects of the film made you squirm, you’ll want to skip this featurette.

‘Til Death Do We Park: Beetlejuice and Lydia’s First Dance (7:54) focuses on the finale in the church, and how Burton wanted to use his favorite song, “Mac Arthur Park” – all 7 minutes of it – for the sequence. They talk about the improv that went into the sequence and trying to make sure there was plenty of wacky material to fill up the length of the song.

Commentary by Director Tim Burton (1:44:40) – Finally, fans can dive a little deeper into the making of the film by listening to a feature-length commentary from director Tim Burton.

– John DiBiase, (reviewed: 11/17/24)

 Sex/Nudity: At school, Astrid makes an insulting comment to her fellow students about them being promiscuous; At an art gallery, we see a statue of a naked woman’s body, but there are no details in the monochrome image (no nipples, for example); Delia talks about Charles going on a trip to see birds and makes a remark about him needing to see birds “doing it” on a beach; A teenage boy and girl kiss passionately; Beetlejuice makes some suggestive remarks; Beetlejuice talks about an ex of his and describes a sexual encounter of theirs. In a flashback, it shows two people embracing and then we see their shadows on the wall literally tearing clothes off each other as they get intimate; Beetlejuice makes Lydia pregnant by just saying it and her belly grows fast and then she gives birth to a creepy Beetlejuice baby.
 Vulgarity/Language: 1 “F” word, 1 bleeped out “F” word, too; 11 “S” words (1 written), 1 “J-sus,” 3 “g*dd*mn,” 4 “Oh my G-d,” 1 “Oh G-d,” 1 “h*ll,” 1 “d*mn” (written); 1 “a” word, 1 “*ssh*le,” 3 “cr*p,”
 Alcohol/Drugs: Rory finds that Lydia is taking a prescription anti-depressant; A man finds out his wife poisoned him with spiked wine (so he kills her)
 Blood/Gore: Lydia is talking to a woman in a public bathroom. When the woman turns around, we see a knife sticking out of her head (meaning she’s a ghost); In the afterlife, we see a woman walking around with a spear impaling her throat; We hear a man has died from being eaten by a shark. We soon see him in the afterlife with a gigantic V-shaped bite taken out of his torso, with his head missing entirely. He often speaks through a tube sticking out from the gory opening of his body, with blood gurgling out each time. In one scene, he sits down on a couch and it sprays the wall with blood. Another scene shows the blood splatter onto a woman’s face; In the afterlife, we see a surfer with a surfboard and everything below his waist is missing, with a bloody wound in place of it; We see a man crammed into a glass box filled with water, and only his hand is sticking out; A woman in the afterlife has been partially eaten by her cats and one of her lower legs, past her knee, is just exposed bone; Wolf is seen with part of his head missing for the entire film. We see part of his brain totally exposed, some of his skull, and some of the ligaments on the side of his face; Beetlejuice shuts up Lydia by causing laces to sew her mouth shut; Beetlejuice asks Lydia and Rory to “spill their guts” during a therapy session, and then offers to go first. We then see bluish-green liquid and intestines spew out from his belly in exaggerated fashion. Shortly after that, he makes Lydia “pregnant” just by speaking it, and we see her belly grow really fast until she suddenly gives birth. A creepy Beetlejuice-baby – even clothed in his signature striped suit – emerges from her and begins gnawing on her leg (which we see close up), causing little bloody teeth marks on her leg; A woman’s body parts fall out of a series of boxes and each piece of flesh is shown to have a red, meaty side where it was once connected together. She then literally pulls herself together, piece by piece, and staples the pieces onto herself (which is also shown in close-up). This is a rather long sequence; In the afterlife, we see a dead astronaut whose face is super swollen, with bulging eyes, inside his space helmet; Another dead person is shown with fish stuck to his skin (and they wiggle in place), with pieces of flesh missing all over his face and hands — and even his neck appears to have been ripped up with a fish inside; A person falls into a firey pit and bursts into a puff of fire; Beetlejuice makes a crowd of people who are looking at their phones turn the cameras on themselves and we see their faces stretch in a very cartoonish fashion towards the phone screen, with their eyes bulging in a creepy fashion. They’re then all sucked INTO their phones and we see some of them with the distorted, cartoony faces on the phone screens; The ghost of a dead man is shown with some kind of table saw embedded in the middle of his face; We see a man in a Santa suit in the afterlife who has been burned to death and has a skeleton-like head; The ghost of a dead woman is shown with a hand mixer embedded in her eye socket; A woman is bitten in the neck by two snakes, leaving little bloody teeth marks. We see her with a bruised wound there for the rest of the film; A random person on a train appears to have a slightly bloody bandage around his chin; We see a birth happen again, and it’s the creepy Baby Beetlejuice again. It crawls across the floor and up the wall, leaving a trail of blood; A person is known as a soul-sucker and we see them breathe the lifeforce of their victims out of a ghost’s mouth in the afterlife, causing the body of the victim to collapse upward (like sucking out a juicebox) and then flopping to the floor like an empty rubber Halloween costume (complete with empty eye holes). This happens two or three times during the movie.
 Violence: Lydia is talking to a woman in a public bathroom. When the woman turns around, we see a knife sticking out of her head (meaning she’s a ghost); In the afterlife, we see a woman walking around with a spear impaling her throat; We hear a man has died from being eaten by a shark. We soon see him in the afterlife with a gigantic V-shaped bite taken out of his torso, with his head missing entirely. He often speaks through a tube sticking out from the gory opening of his body, with blood gurgling out each time. In one scene, he sits down on a couch and it sprays the wall with blood. Another scene shows the blood splatter onto a woman’s face; In the afterlife, we see a surfer with a surfboard and everything below his waist is missing, with a bloody wound in place of it; We see a man crammed into a glass box filled with water, and only his hand is sticking out; A woman in the afterlife has been partially eaten by her cats and one of her lower legs, past her knee, is just exposed bone; Wolf is seen with part of his head missing for the entire film. We see part of his brain totally exposed, some of his skull, and some of the ligaments on the side of his face; Beetlejuice shuts up Lydia by causing laces to sew her mouth shut; Beetlejuice asks Lydia and Rory to “spill their guts” during a therapy session, and then offers to go first. We then see bluish-green liquid and intestines spew out from his belly in exaggerated fashion. Shortly after that, he makes Lydia “pregnant” just by speaking it, and we see her belly grow really fast until she suddenly gives birth. A creepy Beetlejuice-baby – even clothed in his signature striped suit – emerges from her and begins gnawing on her leg (which we see close up), causing little bloody teeth marks on her leg; A woman’s body parts fall out of a series of boxes and each piece of flesh is shown to have a red, meaty side where it was once connected together. She then literally pulls herself together, piece by piece, and staples the pieces onto herself (which is also shown in close-up). This is a rather long sequence; In the afterlife, we see a dead astronaut whose face is super swollen, with bulging eyes, inside his space helmet; Another dead person is shown with fish stuck to his skin (and they wiggle in place), with pieces of flesh missing all over his face and hands — and even his neck appears to have been ripped up with a fish inside; A person falls into a firey pit and bursts into a puff of fire; Beetlejuice makes a crowd of people who are looking at their phones turn the cameras on themselves and we see their faces stretch in a very cartoonish fashion towards the phone screen, with their eyes bulging in a creepy fashion. They’re then all sucked INTO their phones and we see some of them with the distorted, cartoony faces on the phone screens; The ghost of a dead man is shown with some kind of table saw embedded in the middle of his face; We see a man in a Santa suit in the afterlife who has been burned to death and has a skeleton-like head; The ghost of a dead woman is shown with a hand mixer embedded in her eye socket; A woman is bitten in the neck by two snakes, leaving little bloody teeth marks. We see her with a bruised wound there for the rest of the film; A random person on a train appears to have a slightly bloody bandage around his chin; We see a birth happen again, and it’s the creepy Baby Beetlejuice again. It crawls across the floor and up the wall, leaving a trail of blood; A woman in the afterlife has a burn mark on her blouse to insinuate she was shot and killed; A person is known as a soul-sucker and we see them breathe the lifeforce of their victims out of a ghost’s mouth in the afterlife, causing the body of the victim to collapse upward (like sucking out a juicebox) and then flopping to the floor like an empty rubber Halloween costume (complete with empty eye holes). This happens two or three times during the movie; A ghost inflates and pops like a balloon; A sandworm breaks into a building and chomps down on two people who we never see again; Astrid rides her bike really fast and loses control, crashing through a fence and hitting the trunk of a tree very hard; And other sci-fi and comedic-related violence.