Beetlejuice

Hi,

I don't normally review the special, one-night-only screenings that happen at the Ross. Usually, if I'm gonna write about a film, I want you to have a chance to still see it.

However, the annual Fright Fest feels like an okay time to bend that rule. Sure, each of the films will only play once but the festival lasts all month! Even if you miss this or that movie, you can still catch the next one. (You might also argue this is a flimsy justification for me to write more about movies because I just enjoy doing that and I wouldn't disagree with you.)

I definitely won't catch every single film — I already missed Creepshow last night, for example — but I plan to see as many as my schedule allows. This is also your reminder to sign up for a paid subscription! It'll help give me more time to do this sort of writing:

(If you don't have the means to support This Week in Lincoln financially, that's not a problem. But please at least consider sharing the newsletter with a friend. Word-of-mouth recommendations are the best advertising I can possibly get!)

You should expect hot takes, initial reactions, bullet points, and stream-of-consciousness rants. No carefully considered essays here. I won't have time for that! My goal is to post something soon after watching so I may end up sending these informal reviews late at night, which feels in keeping with the season.

Hope you enjoy this. If you do and want to tell me so — or if you don't and want to tell me so — I'm always reachable by email: tynanstewart@proton.me

Read on for some of what I thought about Beetlejuice, the first film of Fright Fest 2026.

• So much of this movie is weird and good. The real horror comes, not from the visual effects — though these are very cool — but from the impulse to redevelop a gothic small town into a kitschy tourist theme park. Delia's vanity over her terrible sculptures and ill-fated remodeling of the house are fun to laugh at. But the way her husband's inept birdwatching transforms seamlessly into property speculation is low-key terrifying. (As Lydia says of her father: "He never walks away from equity.") How quintessentially American to find evidence of the supernatural and immediately think: "But what will this do to property values?"
• The inverse of the rapacious, capitalist system of the living is the lethargic bureaucracy of the dead. Betelgeuse aside, spirits in the afterlife seem to have no interest in ripping anyone off — or even pretending to offer help. The interminable DMV-style lines and indifferent social workers are a comedy bit, sure. But it's also very American to tell people to figure things out on their own. And if they can't, oh well guess they'll just lose their homes to some greedy developers from New York. There's not much the archaic, overly legalistic social safety net can do about that!
• This has probably been said before, but I think Beetlejuice works because of the way it inverts your expectations: A house is haunted, not by the dead, but by the living. (Thus Betelgeuse offers not an exorcism but a bio-exorcism.) The afterlife isn't heaven or hell but a crowded waiting room and cluttered office space. Adam and Barbara's attempts to scare their new housemates with gruesome images are transformed into laugh lines (for the audience) when their intended targets can't even see them.
• Young Alec Baldwin is unrecognizable. I actually do not believe that was really him. My current theory is that the original Alec Baldwin died, much like his character in the movie, and was replaced by a doppelganger shortly after filming.
• Betelgeuse is my least favorite part of Beetlejuice. I understand that he's intentionally repulsive, that his persona as a grimy, used-car-salesman-esque huckster pervert is exactly what the film is going for. But you still can't make me like him and almost everything interesting about the film happens when he's off-screen. (Related: I'm glad contemporary films have generally stopped using the threat of sexual assault against a teenager as a punchline.)
• I'm not above making an argument from authority so lemme just say that Roger Ebert agrees with me about Betelgeuse: "One of the problems is Keaton, as the exorcist. Nearly unrecognizable behind pounds of makeup, he prances around playing Betelgeuse as a mischievous and vindictive prankster. But his scenes don’t seem to fit with the other action, and his appearances are mostly a nuisance."
• Fright level: 1/10
• Enjoyment level: 7/10

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