I have a sandworm tattoo covering my right forearm so you can probably guess how i feel about this movie.
The soundtrack by Danny Elfman is amazing, and one of the very few soundtracks i have saved on my phone. The cast is just as good as the soundtrack, with Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and a few others. Cathrine O Hara as Delia Deetz is a real stand out. She is absolutely Brilliant at playing an insane mom character. But of course Michael Keaton steals the show as Beetlejuice. He is barely in this movie at all, but still managed to make Beetlejuice a household name.
This is a Tim Burton movie, and has the same sort of awesome feeling that all Tim Burton movies seem to have. Its a sort of mixture between a kids movie and a movie about death. Its not really a horror movie despite the subject matter. The film deals with the heaviest concepts (life after death, suicide, ghosts) in very fun and light hearted ways.
The movie was eventually followed up by a Saturday morning cartoon of the same name, and later a musical. I had bought tickets to see the show on my birthday, but if course COVID but that plan to bed real quick. The musical is the only beeltejuice show that i am unfamiliar with, and i hope one day i will be able to watch it.
If death is anything like what is shown in Beetlejuice, maybe theres nothing to be afraid of.
100000/10
UPDATE JULY 7TH 2022
The opening 10 minutes or so are played more like a sitcom than any Tim Burton movie, and even when Adam and Barbara die exactly 8 minutes into the movie it feels more played for laughs than for dramatic effect. The first shot of the movie is Adam saving a small spider instead of killing it, and it instantly lets you know that Adam and Barbara are kind people who live quiet and happy lives. When somebody knocks at the door, they know exactly who it is and have a whole routine planned out for exactly what they will do. Their creatures of routine, and they are very happy living slow and simple lives
And before we move on I simply have to talk about this house, which essentially is a character in itself. It has three distinct transformations from the Maitland home, to the Deetz home, to a Beetlejuice infested circus home all of which are oozing with that Tim Burton style that most people have grown up with. It's equal parts Erie and unsettling as it is wonderful and whimsical, and just like the movie itself it rides that thin line between horror and comedy.
And what happens immediately after they die? A tiny bit of spooky stuff, some classic Tim Burton surrealist stuff, and then it's back to routine cleaning house and waiting around to see what comes next. It's funny how we often think of ghosts as angry spirits with some kind of unfinished business here on earth, when perhaps they're just confused spirits who weren't even aware that they're dead yet.
You know who does know that they're dead however? The Dietz family who just moved in, and boy oh boy do they enter with style. Before she even says a word you know exactly the type of person Catherine O'Hara as Delia is, and just as quickly you instantly get a read on Charles personality. Not too far behind his Otho, It does a whole of the new residents of the polar opposite of the Maitland family. It's no easy task to make such insufferable characters that are also quite likable and humorous, but this movie nails it effortlessly with its incredible casting.
Damn you're every single character in this movie is played by a very well-known actor, and The best part of this movies how many uniquely interesting and awful characters it has in store.
What are those interesting scenes in the whole movie is when Adam and Barbara finally meet with Juno, and she explains that Beetlejuice used to be her assistant before going rogue on his own. And speaking of going rogue on his own, one of the few scenes in this movie that isn't overtly comedic is the scene directly after the Day O dance number, or Beetlejuice shows up as a big old snake and fucks shit up. It does of course have the one-liner, but this is one of the few scenes in this movie meant to actually scare you and it does a pretty dang good job of doing so with that beautiful practical Beetlejuice snakehead. I guarantee the Beetlejuice snake monster has appeared in at least a couple nightmares over the years, but even when it leans fully into the horror there's movie never reaches a point I would call scary.
I think my favorite part of this movie is it's overall message. If you see some scary lady ripping her face off in a closet in a horror movie, you know that there's a real person behind that it's incredibly kind and lovable.
Aka behind all your favorite horror movie scares are incredibly kind and wonderful humans doing amazing work.
100000000000000000000/10
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