25 reasons why we still love Beetlejuice

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Screenshot of official Beetlejuice trailer via warnerbros.com.

15. The Waiting Room in the Afterlife

After failing to even instill a sliver of terror in the Deetzes, Adam consults The Handbook for the Recently Deceased, which instructs them to draw a door in case of emergency. He etches a rectangle with a knob in the brick of their home, and a door they’re able to open suddenly appears, suffused with green light indicating it leads to some unearthly dimension.

He and Barbara are led into a waiting room full of people in weird conditions: a man with a bone stuck in his neck, a guy with a shrunken head, a woman sliced cleanly in two parts reading book, and a guy with a shark attached to his leg.

“This is happens when you die… It’s all very personal,” a lady at an information desk explains to them. They’re in no carnival attraction, but a waiting room for assistance to spirits. Of course there’s a wait. Of three months.

In the dark comedy world of Beetlejuice, the afterlife isn’t some utopian existence where you can frolic in fields, meet with loved ones, or eat endless frozen yogurt. Instead it seems to take the most banal unpleasantness of living and crank it up a notch. There are offices that resemble the department of motor vehicles. Lines. Waits. Vouchers. It’d all be pretty terrible in reality, but it’s hilarious on screen.