Beetlejuice (1988)

Beetlejuice arrives from 1988 with the cultural sensibilities of 1988, which is to say, almost none of the markers we have learned to recognize. Tim Burton's film is a supernatural comedy preoccupied with visual inventiveness and dark humor rather than with any project of social consciousness. The plot contrasts a working-class couple with an affluent New York family, and there is something like class satire here, though it arrives gently and without ideological fervor. The Deetzes are ridiculous precisely because they are ridiculous, not because their wealth is presented as a systemic injustice requiring correction. Geena Davis carries the film with intelligence and capability, but this is simply who the character is, not a statement about representation. Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice is a chaotic force of nature, and the film's energy comes from his anarchic performance rather than from any deeper thematic architecture. The film won an Academy Award for makeup, and that achievement tells us everything: it was celebrated for craft and technical mastery. There is nothing wrong with this. It is, in fact, the appropriate baseline for cinema before the emergence of the cultural moment we are now tasked with measuring. A film about a haunted house and a malicious spirit has no obligation to reckon with the social consciousness of 2024. We find it quaint that it does not.