All of which is to say, the first full trailer for the long-threatened Beetlejuice Beetlejuice legacy sequel shows signs of a promisingly sinister afterlife. Juno be praised. While we still know little of the actual plot and ultimate mechanics of the legacy sequel that brings back Keaton and Ryder—as well as Catherine O’Hara as Lydia’s flighty stepmother, Delia—one thing is clear: Beetlejuice coming back is a very, very bad thing.
After framing the trailer around the revelation that an adult Lydia has taken a bit after her old man and is now trying to sell a “preview” of coming attractions (perhaps this explains why she is again dressing like a Goth high schooler in her middle age?), we are reminded by her that Beetlejuice is more than just “the ghostest with the mostest,” who is here to offer silly adventures to either Lydia or now her own adolescent daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega).
“When I was a teenager, a trickster demon terrorized our entire family and tried to force me to marry him,” Lydia forebodingly warns. “Don’t ever say that name! If you say his name three times, he will appear.” And one act of youthful rebellion later, the Big B indeed returns.
Whether Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ultimately works remains to be seen. It’s certainly nice though to know that the film will be relying on stop-motion animation at least in part, with the sights of Beetlejuice’s famed sandworms of Saturn making a lovingly jerky appearance (and now before a wider audience who should recognize where Burton and company nicked the idea back in ’88). It’s also a pleasant surprise to see a cast of characters who are terrified of Our Man Beetle.
The movie also seems eager to spend a lot more time in the film’s idea of the afterlife, with the plot seeming to involve Beetlejuice kidnapping Lydia and still attempting to marry her. With both mother and daughter traveling further down into the rabbit hole of the film’s vision of death, Lydia finds herself once again clad in red and beholden to a character who is offering a lifetime of pure chaos—however long (or briefly) that may last.
If the film can maintain that energy and avoid the common inclination of softening a fan favorite character, or “redeeming” the popular villain from the last movie, it will go a long way to maintaining that strange mischievous juju that made the first Beeteljuice an unlikely classic. Let the ghostest with the mostest also be the grossest.
