Beetlejuice Beetlejuice · reception & legacy

How Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Landed in September 2024 as a genuine event — a $100M+ opening and instant 'Burton is back' narrative after a decade of misses. Two years on it's settled into fond-but-clear-eyed territory: a warm hangout sequel that most agree is more a collection of great bits than a great whole.

What's debated

The perennial fight: real return to form or just an expensive nostalgia machine — with the overstuffed side-plots (poor underused Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe) as Exhibit A for the skeptics.

Its footprint

The 'MacArthur Park' possessed-wedding lip-sync is the moment everyone clipped and quoted — the sequel's bid to do what 'Day-O' did in 1988. It's also a key artifact of the Burton–Jenna Ortega era that Wednesday kicked off.

Where it stands

A crowd-pleasing footnote to a cult classic — the sequel people happily rewatch while the original keeps the shrine.

Named by the director

Influences Tim Burton has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Black Sunday (1960) — Burton has repeatedly named Bava's Black Sunday as the horror film that formed him, and the sequel's black-and-white, Italian-dubbed flashback is styled as an open homage to it.
• Mario Bava — On the director's commentary Burton says the flashback sequence came from his lifelong 'desire and love of wanting to make an Italian horror film' in the Bava mold.