I watched this on the 25th of September 2024, in the living room of the shared house.
It was so deeply odd. I didn’t realise it was a Burton until near the end but all the fingerprints were there: the whimsy, the claymotion, the sheer weirdness. I liked the humour! Beetlejuice is such a great character, his language mixed with the more polished movie-language of the other characters is so funny.
The claymotion really added something as well, I feel like CGI would have dated so fast but the clay adds an unsettling feeling, especially in the part where they walk around with monstrously deformed heads.
It has loads of commonalities with the Addams Family, the Corpse Bride, the Nightmare before Christmas, the Good Place - clearly it’s been in the zeitgeist (zeitgeist zeitgeist) for so long, and it’s hard to tell whether Burton came up with this stuff or was drawing inspiration itself.
The plot was a little hazy, but I like to think of it as more of a dream sequence or a cohesive expression rather than having any linear story. It simply is, just like the unfathomable Beetlejuice.