Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Teaser Claws Its Way Out of a Model

Movies

It’s showtime. (I’m not above a cheap one.) A day after those images hit the internet courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, Warner Bros. released a teaser for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to (just the one) Beetlejuice, the classic horror-comedy from 1988. After a long road to development that started over thirty years ago and involved everyone from Kevin Smith to Brad Pitt, the Beetlejuice sequel has materialized with most of the key players from the original returning. Not much is known about the plot, but it will involve a funeral in the Deetz family (which we’re supposed to pretend we don’t know is Charles’), which brings Lydia, her step-mother Delia, and her daughter Astrid, back to the town of Winter River, Connecticut, and back into the ghostly realm of Betelgeuse. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara are back from the first film, and they’re joined by Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, and Willem Dafoe. Tim Burton directs once again from a script by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with Danny Elfman handling the music. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will break through a model and into theaters on September 6, 2024, and you can see the teaser below:

The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice teaser relies heavily – well, okay, exclusively on nostalgia for the first movie, and how well that works for you will likely depend on your affection for Beetlejuice. I’ve pretty much had my fill of nostalgia, but this one still gets me. I love the imagery, seeing the town again, Lydia with the same hairstyle in middle age, the model, the kooky Tim Burton aesthetic, and, finally, Betelgeuse. (Seeing him closer-up and in action, you can tell Michael Keaton has aged.) And I’ll admit to some tired things about the teaser. It has that done-to-death trope where a formerly lively song is played slowly, hauntingly, and sung by a woman who sounds like a ghost. This time, it’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” which plays over one of the most memorable scenes in Beetlejuice. It works for me better here than it usually does, partly because this movie interests me more than most of these long-removed sequels and partly because the haunting nature of a Beetlejuice movie lends itself to this better than most movies that use it in their trailers. Another is the sole line in the teaser, spoken by Betelgeuse: “The Juice is loose.” That’s a trailer line if I ever heard one, and while I think it works because Betelgeuse generally talks like that, I don’t fault anyone for cringing. I also noticed that almost nothing in this teaser is new; these scenes, outside of Astrid riding around on her bike and Lydia seeing Betelgeuse rise, reveal nothing outside of the images released yesterday. Even the bike-riding scene was in the leaked set footage from a while back. I know a bigger trailer is coming, but considering how tight a lid Burton has kept on this movie, I wish this could be it till Beetlejuice Beetlejuice arrives in theaters.