1988’s Beetlejuice may not have been Tim Burton’s first movie, but it was the project that truly launched him as a bold, weird, and creative voice in Hollywood. He was – and is – a voice for counter culture with great affection for mainstream pop culture, whose work is challenging, meta, and nostalgic, and who found, in Michael Keaton, a perfect muse.
They don’t make films like Beetlejuice any more, but then they don’t make filmmakers like Tim Burton either. Flicking through his art collections, Burton’s characters – often sketched with frenetic energy – already feel recognizable. Unlike directors working to stylistic mandates and franchise playbooks, Burton’s movies are best when he’s allowed to be himself, and Beetlejuice absolutely fits that criteria.
What’s more impressive, on that front, is that Burton didn’t write Beetlejuice. In stark contrast to the later projects where he attempted to apply his darker style to reimaginings of existing IPs (like Dumbo and Alice In Wonderland in particular), though, Beetlejuice feels unrestrained. That it came right before he made Batman (though that hiring actually came first), is still shocking: a fitting win for counter culture.
Michael Keaton Has Never Been Better Than He Is As Beetlejuice
He’s Only On Screen For 17 Minutes, But What An Impact
Keaton’s performance as Betelgeuse is ridiculous, explosive, and outrageous. He’s a shock jock, a non-PC comedian, and a lush, ostracized even by the dead community for being too much. Keaton brings a physicality that almost defies belief when you watch him in straighter work like his Bruce Wayne: he seems to manifest a paunch out of nowhere, and there’s never been a movie performance you could smell quite as much as Betelgeuse.
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The supernatural exorcist is himself a commentary: the nightmarish end result that comes with nonconformity at an extreme point. Ironically, of course, he too craves normalcy (hence his desire to marry Lydia), but his radar for how to appropriately achieve that is completely broken. Betelgeuse is a parable of what Lydia could become or what any of us could, if we just stopped caring.
That’s the genius of Burton’s creation and Keaton’s performance: Betelgeuse is somehow likable. He ticks all manner of boxes that should make him completely despicable, and modern criticism tends to focus on his problematic nature, but that’s exactly the point of him.
But Beetlejuice’s Cast Is More Than Just Michael Keaton
Every Actor Is On Point With Winona Ryder A Stand Out
So many years on, it’s easy to forget how excellent both Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis were as the tragic Maitlands, Adam and Barbara. The combination of Michael Keaton’s colossal performance and Winona Ryder’s modest, melancholic Lydia vacuum up so much of the attention that they shrink a little in memory. Rewatching it now, they’re the key to the whole movie working, and actually, the sequel is poorer for their absence.
Ryder’s performance is demure and very subtle: she nails the gothic malaise, draped in funeral attire, without fully stepping into the counter culture rage of something like Ghost World or The Craft. She’s not bullied into her position, she seems to actively choose her “strange and unusual” armor for herself, and Ryder makes that fully believable. If you grew up loving the films or music Burton likes, you’ve met a Lydia. You’ve probably met several.
In the supporting cast, there are equally excellent performances: Jeffrey Jones is very good; Catherine O’Hara is a revelation of artistic neurosis; and Glenn Shadix is a delight as the reprehensible Otho. Watching them in particular during the musical dinner sequence is one of Beetlejuice‘s many highlights.
Beetlejuice Feels Like Burton’s Personal Expression
This Is Where The Director’s Playbook Was Written
Beetlejuice still feels like the movie that most expresses Tim Burton as a filmmaker and storyteller, which is probably why it feels like the project he’s having the most fun directing. After the knowingly meta, but innocent spirit of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure 3 years later, it’s also true expression of Burtoncore film-making. You don’t have to look hard to find most of his trademarks in some fashion, in strokes both broad and very specific.
Watching his gothic suburban stories back, it’s so obvious that Burton grew up as an outsider in the Californian suburbs. Lydia is his stand-in: defiant and unusual, but also caught in a conflict between suburban comfort and her difference. Both are authentic, but their balance has to be worked on, and it’s usually the darker elements that come off worse.
Looking at Lydia, you’d assume her people would be Betlegeuse and the other members of Burton’s grotesque carnival, but she’s drawn to the cozy suburbanism of the Maitlands. This feels like Burton expressing his own comfort in Hollywood: he’s someone who should be making more Ed Wood-like movies, but instead he’s far more suited to populating worlds made familiar by Hollywood traditions and tropes with friendly ghasts and ghouls.
Burton’s fun in Beetlejuice comes from clashing things together and finding their strange connections and how perverse the reactions can be in the most surprising ways. Edward Scissorhands appears to be about the invasion of suburbia by a monster, but actually it’s about a strange boy trying to find his place in a monstrous community. Beetlejuice is similarly coded: it’s not just a haunting, it’s about Lydia finding her home.
Beetlejuice Still Hits All The Right Notes
Burton’s Cult Classic United A Community And Not Just An Audience
Like much of Burton’s work, Beetlejuice is an anthem to non-conformity. But because this creative universe is told from Burton’s perspective, it’s actually the most traditionally “normal” people who are most abnormal. Lydia Deetz is a self-confessed oddity, gothic and isolated, it she’s among the least eccentric of Beetlejuice’s cast of weirdos.
Interestingly, it’s the Maitlands who are the least odd in a ghost story that positions them as unnatural abominations. In actual fact, it’s obviously the Maitlands who are haunted, by the creeping poltergeist of gentrification by the Deetz. Then, on the other side of their conflict sits Betelgeuse, an exploitative snake oil salesman with devilish small print. Look hard enough and there’s commentary on late-stage Reaganism, displacement, gentrification and pastoral anxiety, and the subjective nature of art.
That might seem like unnecessary navel-gazing, but it’s important to help understand how Beetlejuice became a cultural phenomenon beyond its own boundaries. In Lydia and the Maitlands, people found themselves reflected, both at the surface level and in deeper ideological strands. Burton also captured something few talk about in counter culture circles: the symbiotic relationship of normal-appearing people and their goth best friends.
How Beetlejuice Holds Up Decades Later
It’s Still As Fun To Watch As It Was Back In 1988
The special effects might not be incredibly glossy by 2024’s standards, but they’re more magical thanks to the use of stop-motion. And the rough edges feel like a more true expression of Burton’s living sketchbook. After all, otherworldly does not need to mean flawless.
What’s striking with Beetlejuice is how close the art design feels to Burton’s own sketches. Characters pop up – particularly in the afterlife sequences – who are realized fully from Burton’s twisted imagination. The sequel went further, but the director’s flair for the macabre was honed here. They take up little screen-time, but the shrunken-headed hunter, the Road Kill Man, and chain-smoking caseworker Juno are memorable well beyond their immediate impact.
It’s not a particularly scary movie, but Burton never really wades that far into horror territory. Instead, Beetlejuice is weird and unsettling, but everything that’s presented as odd tends to be consciously made mundane. The Maitlands’ experience of the dead world is a government-like agency, the dead have jobs, and even Betelgeuse is subject to rules. There is banal order even in the most extraordinary things. That’s why Beetlejuice is – and will remain – one of the most weirdly comforting movies ever made.