Movie review

Don’t say it. Just don’t do.

Lydia Deetz knows everything about what happens when you say that name three times. She knows exactly what chaos that causes ghost/demon/thing can unleash if you unleash it. Why was Lydia, then 16, almost forced to to marry that guy.

Fast forward a few decades, and Lydia has moved on. No, not moved on, in the sense of forever. Instead, she’s left her goth, morbid teenage years behind her. She’s now a goth, morbid adult—and she’s making a pretty decent living doing it, too. She explores supposedly haunted houses and then tells her stories on TV.

And if every now and then she sees a familiar white face staring back at her from a familiar black-and-white striped shirt… well, that’s surely her imagination, right? Certainly.

But then a family tragedy forces Lydia (and, really, the entire Deetz family) to return to their rural home in Winter River, Connecticut, where Beetlejuice (oops) first appeared in their lives.

Lydia’s father, Charles, recently died in a plane crash/shark attack. It’s time to bury the man’s memory in Winter Grove. Widow Delia drapes the family home in black cloth and holds what she calls a “grief collective.” Lydia pulls her own grumpy daughter—Astrid—out of school. And Rory, Lydia’s TV producer-turned-boyfriend, comes along, too.

The whole journey will be a beautiful moment of closure. A moment for the family to be together. A moment, perhaps, for Lydia to repair her relationship with Astrid.

But events never go as planned in Winter Grove. Rory proposes to Lydia at Charles’ wake. And Lydia—sensing Rory’s desperation and the gaze of dozens of curious mourners—says Yes. Astrid, shocked that her mother is going to marry that guy, quickly cycles away to clear her head. She rides her bike right into a tree. And from the tree house in that tree, a guy about her age sticks his head out and introduces himself as Jeremy.

And suddenly Astrid’s stay in Winter Grove starts to look better.

Meanwhile, Beetlejuice (oops) is busy with his own problems down there. His literally soul-sucking ex-wife, Delores, is trying to track him down in the afterlife. Should she find him, Delores has a fate in store for him that is literally worse than death. (Since they’re both already dead, that wouldn’t be hard.) But the demon would like to renew his acquaintance with Lydia – to finally get married, just as they (well, He) planned all those years ago.

All he needs to get the ball rolling is for someone to say his name three times: Beetle juice.

(Oops.)