There is an inventive sequence early in the unexpectedly delightful Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in which the Bee Gees’ “Tragedy” accompanies Monica Bellucci’s soul-sucking demoness as her chopped-up body parts are shaken loose from crates in the lost-and-found warehouse of the afterlife, where she stitches herself back together like a beautiful DIY Frankenstein monster. The scene multitasks as a show of kinship with the same actor’s role as a vampire bride in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Tim Burton’s tribute to a key inspiration for Gothic literature; and a dark and delightful farewell tale for the director’s off-screen partner of the past two years.

One of many inspired scenes in a clever sequel, peppered with hilarious references to the 1988 original and amusingly eclectic pop culture references to everything from Carrier to Mario Bava, from Soul Train to Donna Summer, it wasn’t the only time during the movie that I scribbled “Tim Burton is back!” in my notes.

Any sequel released 36 years after its predecessor should be approached with caution. This is especially true considering the 2012 film, with the exception of FrankenweedBurton seemed to have lost his mojo sometime around the turn of the century – at least according to this critic.

By tapping into the maniacally playful spirit of one of his enduring golden-era hits, the director seems reborn. He also serves up similar tonics for two actors who were not only a big part of the original film Beetle juice but also from Burton’s Batman movies and Edward Scissorhands: Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder, respectively. The name in the credits of a second Batman Returns alum is no secret, but that actor’s funny, extended cameo deserves spoiler treatment.

Hollywood’s cynical exploitation of successful intellectual property in the quest for an everlasting franchise has taught us to be suspicious. So it’s also beneficial for the audience to see a revived film that’s actually fun, and has a reason to exist.

I jumped out of my skin and began to realize I was in good hands as soon as the eerie echo of Summer’s disco cover “MacArthur Park” gave way to the opening notes of a Danny Elfman score that begins in ominous mode and becomes increasingly devilishly cheerful as ace DP Haris Zambarloukos’s camera cruises through the sleepy town of Winter River and arrives at the haunted hilltop mansion purchased by the Deetz family in Beetle juice.

Warner Bros. has been trying to make the occasional sequel since the early ’90s, most notably after the studio hired Seth Grahame-Smith in 2011, who shares story credits with screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Burton’s success in crafting such a snappy sequel after so many years on the shelf is as much thanks to those writers, with whom he worked on Netflix’s WednesdayThe series’ star, Jenna Ortega, is one of the welcome new additions to the remaining crew of Keaton, Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and the shrunken Bob.

Ryder’s Lydia Deetz still sports the wispy black bangs she sported as a goth teen, but is now a widow and mother who rose to fame hosting a reality show called Haunted Housewhere, from an attic studio, she invites viewers to “Come in, if you dare.” Mimicking the formula of countless paranormal shows, Lydia entices guests to share hair-raising experiences of unexplained phenomena in their homes. But a triggering vision of Keaton’s Beetlejuice sitting among the studio audience reveals that the paranormal facilitator has not left her own spooky past behind.

Lydia has a strained relationship with her teenage daughter, Astrid (Ortega), who resents her mother’s desire to spend more time with the dead than her own daughter, and is irritated by her reluctance to talk about her late father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), who died in an accident in the Amazon, and while Astrid dismisses her mother’s supernatural insights as nonsense, she complains grumpily that Richard is the only spirit she can’t communicate with.

Tensions between Lydia and her stepmother, Delia (O’Hara), have lessened over the years, despite the latter becoming increasingly self-absorbed in her transition from sculpture to mixed media. Her latest show is called The human canvasand that cloth is of course Delia’s face and body.

The writers find a sly solution to the vexing question of what to do with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Jones, who played Lydia’s father Charles. In a snappy Claymation sequence typical of Burton, we learn of Charles’ recent gruesome death — though of course in the Beetle juice In the world, death is more of a stopover than a destination, leaving the character hanging even after their original physical form has been erased.

Barbara and Adam Maitland, the sweet, prematurely deceased couple played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, have disappeared, however, and as Lydia explains, they have found a loophole. “How convenient,” Astrid quips, with a wink from the writers.

Charles’ funeral — erratically accompanied by a boys’ choir singing a hymn version of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” in another nice throwback — brings the family back to Winter River. They’re joined by Lydia’s producer and fiancé-to-be, Rory (Justin Theroux), whose ridiculously tiny ponytail brands him as a fraud, and whose “New Age, over-bonding, yoga-retreat bullshit” Astrid finds contemptible.

Delia wraps the entire house in black gauze, in the style of Christo, and sets to work transforming her performative grief into a project she calls The art of sadnesswhile Rory seizes Charles’ wake as the perfect opportunity to propose to Lydia, who is surprised enough to accept. Astrid’s disgust sends her into the city, where she meets Jeremy (Arthur Conti), a fellow Dostoevsky fan and cool analog guy; they plan a date for Halloween night, when her mother’s wedding is scheduled.

While all this is happening, Bellucci’s Delores is terrorizing the underworld, killing residents “dead-dead” on her quest to claim the rotten soul of her husband, Beetlejuice. In a riotous act that drew huge laughs at the Venice press screening, their short-lived ghost marriage is recapitulated in a black-and-white, subtitled Italian mini-movie. Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), a former TV action star turned detective, investigates Delores’ trail of destruction with plenty of cheesy direct-to-camera glances for dramatic emphasis.

The living (or “meatbags,” as Jackson calls them) and the dead become entangled when Astrid is tricked into a potentially fatal pact and Lydia is forced to summon Beetlejuice to help her cross over and save her daughter. Since Beetlejuice doesn’t believe in free favors, an alternate marriage plan surfaces to save him from Delores, a nightmarish scenario that puts Lydia’s familiarity with the predatory sandworms of the desert landscape of the afterlife to good use.

The fast pace, cheerful energy, and constant stream of laugh-out-loud moments hint at the joy Burton seems to have found in revisiting this world, and for anyone who loved the first film, it’s infectious. That goes for the actors, too, who all warm to the dizzying madness.

The ambiguous title might suggest that this is Keaton’s show, and he’s given plenty of chances to do crazy things — he still looks moldy and disheveled and infested with cockroaches — but he never crowds out anyone else in the strong company.

His most exciting scenes include a stint as a deceitful relationship counselor, when Rory decides that Lydia needs to face “this construct of your trauma.” (The hilarious birth of a devilish baby Beetlejuice in that scene makes for one of animatronics chief Neal Scanlan’s most brilliant creations.)

If the use of Belafonte’s “Day-O” was a memorable highlight of Beetle juiceWhat the filmmakers and Keaton do with “MacArthur Park” in a wedding-from-hell climax takes the frenzied lip-sync and dance moves a few notches further. The wedding cake with “sweet green icing pouring down” is a jubilant celebration of some of the most bonkers lyrics ever put to music. And the fate of a collection of cell-phone-in-hand influencers assembled in the church by Rory (“Nothing less than 5 million followers”) will bring bliss to anyone who ever rolled their eyes at that “career” path.

Ryder goes beat for beat with Keaton as the film’s yin to its raunchily irreverent yang. The actress transports us back to the beguiling screen persona of her late teens, not only in Beetle juice but also in films like Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids And Heather plantswhere she exuded a unique blend of intelligence, sweetness and innocence, but was just as effective when she went into the darkness. As much as anything, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a moving mother-daughter story, played with heart and soul by Ryder and Ortega.

The film’s pleasures extend to Zambarloukos’s dynamic visuals and Elfman’s score, which has all the qualities of his collaborative high with Burton, plus distinctive new flavors. Another frequent collaborator, costume designer Colleen Atwood, does striking work for characters on both sides of the mortality divide, while production designer Mark Scruton has a blast creating an entirely new network of anterooms, administrative offices and afterlife departure terminals.

The CG work is undoubtedly extensive, but one of the sequel’s charms is how much the physical sets, puppetry and phantasmagoria adhere to a hand-crafted look, in keeping with the far more limited effects tools available in the late ’80s. It’s satisfying to see Burton once again take full creative control over the humor, fantastical imagination and gleeful morbidity on which he’s made his name.