Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details of classification and consumer advice lines for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
• a review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 10 September 2024.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie’s message

A synopsis of the story

Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) is all grown up now. She is the mother of a teenage daughter named Astrid (Jenny Ortega) who doesn’t believe in ghosts and who thinks Lydia is a fraud. Astrid is resentful and angry that her mother uses her ability to talk to ghosts to help random strangers on her TV show but won’t even try to contact Astrid’s deceased father Richard (Santiago Cabrera). When Lydia’s estranged stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) calls to tell her that her father is dead, Lydia heads back to the childhood home where it all began to pack up his things and say goodbye. She is accompanied by the reluctant Astrid and by her manager and wannabe fiancée Rory (Justin Theroux). While dealing with her grief, Lydia begins to see the creepy, demon, Beetlejuice (Michael Keeton) in random places and does her best to ignore his presence. When Astrid is tricked into the underworld, Lydia calls upon Beetlejuice to help her save her daughter. Meanwhile, Beetlejuice is dealing with Dolores (Monica Bellucci), his vengeful ex-wife who, in her efforts to find him, is sucking the souls of the dead and leaving crumpled corpses all over the underworld. A chance encounter with Richard; a clever daughter who doesn’t believe in ghosts but who is somehow able to see them; and a little bit of long-lost confidence may be all Lydia needs to finally find herself free from Beetlejuice once and for all.

The Afterlife; Death of a parent; Trauma; Grief: Loss; Murder; Betrayal.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

• The engine on a plane explodes and the plane plummets into the water. There are some survivors who are clinging onto debris in the water. One man’s head and part of his chest are eaten by a shark. Blood spurts everywhere.
• A man falls down a manhole and disappears. He is soon shown in a subterranean catacomb, surrounded by dead people, with a grotesque and protruding bump on his head.
• Dolores writes a message on a wall to Beetlejuice using the ‘fluids’ of a man she killed.
• Dolores sucks the life out of numerous individuals, leaving their shrivelled bodies behind.
• Beetlejuice robs a mass grave filled with people killed by the plague.
• Beetlejuice and his Dolores bite the heads off chickens during their wedding vows.
• Beetlejuice learns that Dolores is the leader of a soul sucking death cult and that she has poisoned him on their wedding night.
• Beetlejuice attacks Dolores with an axe, chopping her straight through the face and severing her body into numerous pieces.
• While riding her bike, Astrid is nearly hit by a car, she crashes through a fence, rolls down an incline and smashes in to a tree.
• The Grim Reaper image can be seen slashing someone.
• Astrid mentions that her father was killed in a boating accident. She describes how they searched the Amazon for a week but never found his body.
• A story is told of how a young man killed his parents and then fell out a treehouse to his own death.
• A murdered character is shown with a saw through his skull.
• Another murder victim is shown with an egg whisk protruding from her eye socket.
• A dead and badly burned Santa is shown, as is a surfer with half a body.
• Delia is killed by a snake bite when one of her supposedly de-fanged asps strikes her in the neck and ends her life.
• A character says that she will: “Spray paint the world with your brains.”
• A gunshot victim is repeatedly shown, as is a woman with a spear impaled through her body.
• One character threatens another, saying: “I will crack your itty, bitty skull like a goddamned walnut.”
• Rory is punched in the face.
• Armed forces from the underworld burst through church windows and blast through a giant wedding cake.
• A sandworm bursts through a church floor and attacks and eats Rory.
• Cockroaches crawl all over Beetlejuice as he swells up and then explodes.
• Lydia dreams that Astrid delivers a baby Beetlejuice, who then attacks and kills the doctors while flies buzz around him and blood spurts everywhere.

Material that may scare or disturb children

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

• A creepy janitor, with blue skin and glowing eyes, drinks some sort of floor cleaner. He has slime all down his face and looks disgusting and unstable. He explodes backwards into a pile of wooden boxes, knocking them from a shelf onto the floor. The boxes contain the severed body parts of a woman. Her face has been chopped in half and a flap of skin is hanging off. She takes a staple gun and staples herself back together, attaching first her face, then her torso and then each severed limb down to a random finger that has also been chopped off. She heads towards the grotesque janitor, strangles him, sucks the life out of his mouth and leaves the shrivelled shell of his corpse behind.
• There are numerous and frequent disturbing characters such as zombies with shrunken heads, skeleton receptionists and numerous dead people who move about with severed heads, exploded brains, missing body parts or bodies that have been partially eaten by other creatures.
• Lydia and Rory find themselves in Beetlejuice’s world. They fall through a floor, onto a couch and are confronted with ‘Beetlejuice the psychologist’, who tells them to spill their guts. His slimy, gory intestines immediately fly out of his stomach along with flies and a gross, juicy mess. It lands as a pile on the floor in front of them all. Before they can respond, Lydia’s stomach begins to grow and a demented, baby version of Beetlejuice, along with more fluids, bursts out of her. The baby looks crazed and tries to bite them. Beetlejuice kicks it behind a couch while Rory tries not to vomit. Beetlejuice momentarily transforms into a monster to further terrify Rory before Lydia manages to extricate themselves back to the attic of her old home.
• A church full of influencers are sucked into their own phones, their faces contorting as they are pulled into strange contortions before disappearing completely into their devices.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

• Lydia’s father is often seen wandering in the underworld while trying to get back to his family. He has no upper torso or head as these have been eaten by a shark. Part of his spine is poking out through the mass of bloody tissue, and blood is still spurting from his chest.
• Astrid’s father is shown being eaten by piranhas. He is a decomposing blue and grey and looks like he would have spent considerable time underwater. His body has gaping wounds with fish still attached and continuously eating him ‘alive’.
• Astrid is tricked by another character into giving up her life for his. She is taken to the underworld on the pretext that she would get to see her father again but she is dragged away by underworld security to be taken on a soul train and never to see her family again. She is terrified and confused and trying to get away from a situation that there seems to be no escape from. Lydia finds her and the pair jump out of a doorway where they are immediately chased by a giant sand worm with two monstrous heads (one inside the other). It burrows its way under the sand, shaking and moving the landscape as it pursues them. They are saved at the last moment by Astrid’s father who is still being eaten by piranhas.

• Nothing further noted.

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

• Richard Marx’s song, ‘Right here waiting for you’, is showcased and performed by Beetlejuice.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

• A comment is made about mating rituals and a character who flew halfway around the world to: “watch birds do it on a beach.”
• A character says: “I have lost my horny handyman.”
• A male character calls out to a female character: “Hey toots!”
• Beetlejuice mentions that up until a certain point, no creature could have ever kept him ‘satisfied’.
• Beetlejuice describes a symphony of carnal desires as he and Dolores roll around in bed.
• A comment is made about looking for a ‘love connection’.
• In a creepy gesture, Dolores licks a photo of Beetlejuice and then smashes a frame containing a picture of Lydia.
• Beetlejuice leers at Lydia’s mum.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

• There is an art piece of a naked woman briefly displayed.
• Beetlejuice and Dolores kiss passionately as they grab at each other once alone in their room.
• Lydia and Rory kiss passionately.
• Astrid kisses a young man.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• Lydia takes pharmaceutical medications and Rory tries to stop her. He then takes one too.
• Beetlejuice is poisoned after drinking something from a goblet.
• Characters drink alcohol at a wake.
• Beetlejuice stabs Rory in the neck with a syringe containing some sort of truth serum.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

• Hell
• Darn
• Stupid
• Shitty, Shit, Bullshit, Bat shit crazy, Shitting
• Crap
• Asshole
• God damn
• Fucker.

In a nutshell

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a horror/comedy sequel to Tim Burton’s original film, Beetlejuice. The film contains countless special effects, solid performances and numerous, lesser, story-lines seamlessly interwoven in to the main plot. Due to the demonic gore, themes and coarse language, this is not a family film but one that is best suited to audiences over the age of 15.

The main messages from this movie are that people share different realities; that families are tricky and messy but that the love of a parent for their child knows no bounds; and that this affection is so powerful that not even death could ever hope to destroy it.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

• Honesty
• Compassion
• Determination
• Courage
• Forgiveness.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children the importance of being honest and keeping lines of communication open, especially after traumatic events, so that relationships can be preserved instead of eroded by silence and misunderstanding.

Parents may also wish to discuss their interpretation of the ‘afterlife’ with their children, as Beetlejuice’s reality leaves much to be desired.