The new film, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” proves why some sequels should stay in the afterlife.

Fans of the popular movie Beetlejuice waited 36 years for a sequel, and on September 6, the ghost with the most made a return to the screen. But for the amount of time it took, the film was a disappointing shadow of the franchise’s former glory.  

Right off the bat, I was shocked at the amazing score by Danny Elfman, who has  previously written music for other films directed by Tim Burton. His music style was perfect for the movie, bringing a dramatic but invigorating feeling to the opening scene. However, throughout the rest of the film, the soundtrack had clearly changed out of Elfman’s style and into bland pop industry garbage. The music did not fit the energy of the movie and made the experience feel underwhelming. 

The plot of the movie was very simplistic and full of tropes. An angsty teen’s mom is remarrying to a man her daughter doesn’t approve of after her father recently died. She hides her anger by hanging out with another angsty teen, and they fall in love. There are plenty of other movies with the same exact plot, which upset me because the first Beetlejuice was rather original with an unusual storyline. 

Parts of the movie were also extremely hard to follow, since there were several unnecessary subplots. I’m mainly talking about Beetlejuice’s ex-wife reassembling and coming after him to take her revenge. I truly don’t understand why they decided to put that in the movie. It might have been because they had no other ideas to make the story interesting, or to take up screen-time alongside the insanely boring, dragged out, unoriginal plot. 

One of the most popular scenes from the original film was the Day-O dinner party scene, in which the Deetz family and their guests get possessed by the Maitland ghosts. In the new film, there were several scenes where it felt like they were trying to replicate this scene. Certain moments displayed members of the Deetz family getting possessed to sing songs, especially in the mess of a scene that is the second wedding of Lydia and Beetlejuice. The film was already bad and did not need to include these scenes.  

One thing I was happy about when it came to the plot was how weird it was. Tim Burton’s directing style has been known to be very unusual, and his direction on Beetlejuice is  especially wacky. I appreciate how the production team kept most of the wacky aspects of the Beetlejuice magic. Although more could be added, I was satisfied with the bizarreness of the film even though it was the only redeemable quality of it.

Overall, I am displeased with the outcome of this movie, especially after the amount of time it took to release. I rate this movie a 4.5/10.