“I'm not scared of sheets. Are you gross under there? Are you Night of the Living Dead under there? Like all bloody veins and pus?”
I needed something a bit more lighthearted after the past few days, and nothing fits that bill more perfectly than Beetlejuice. While it’s not strictly a horror movie, Tim Burton traffics in all the usual trappings and clichés of the genre, lovingly and excitingly offering up each new ghastly gem like Delia with the Betelgeuse head at the film’s end. It’s also a bit sad to watch these days, given Burton’s slow but sure descent into lead-footedness, predictability, and unintentional self-parody (Frankenweenie, another love letter to the horror genre, is a very notable exception). The banter and conceptions of the afterlife are witty and fresh (especially the idea of life after death being an endless bureaucratic nightmare), the effects are charmingly low-rent, Burton’s stock cast is able and game, and Winona Ryder was the stuff of a thousand teenage dreams for a certified #sadboy spinning Cure and Joy Division records alone in his room. It’s pure fluff – a lime-green ball of cotton candy shot through with chocolate spiders and topped with blood-red raspberry syrup. But then, what’s Halloween without the candy?
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