Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) review

Thirty-six years have passed since the release of the first movie, and here Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is working as the host of a spooky reality show called Ghost House (where she visits places searching for the paranormal) but is forced to summon the predatory ghoul Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to save her only daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) from deceptively charming murderer Jeremy (Arthur Conti); elsewhere, Betelgeuse's ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), a literal soul-sucker, has been resurrected (and reassembled with staples) and out to find him.  Although it's neat that Burton would decide to revisit this world after such a long time and managed to bring back most of the cast (he devises a ghoulish way of putting criminal offender Jeffrey Jones' character in there ... except without his upper torso), it suffers from a problem so many sequels have in that it doesn't come up with any new concepts as much as it mines the original for all its ideas and presents them in a recycled manner: the afterlife's waiting room, the sandworm, a song and dance number (Richard Harris' rendition of "MacArthur Park") to close it out, etc.  Even though he's in his 70's, Keaton is still iconic as the anti-hero: he may be plumper and his clothing is considerably more disheveled, yet he's got that loose cannon energy: you wanna get nuts?