Lydia Deetz (Wynona Rider) doesn’t have a it easy. Behind the glowing facade of a successful ghost stories television show presenter, her life is far less glitzy. Her husband disappeared in the Amazon, her father Charles died in a freak accident involving a plane crash and a great white shark, her relationship to her mother-in-law Delia (Catherine O’Hara) consists solely of snide comments, her rebellious teenage daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) resents her mother’s complacence’s with her father’s demise, and her manager Rory (Justin Theroux) has questionable plans for her client.

Parallel to all of this, flamboyant creatures inhabit a very vivid and boisterous afterlife. They include soul-sucker Delores (Monica Bellucci), detective Wolf Jackson (Willem Dafoe), a slimy Danny DeVito and countless soul singers (lending “Soul Train” a whole new meaning). Demon Betelgeuse (pronounced “Beetlejuice”, and played by Michale Keaton) is able to navigate between the two dimensions. All it takes is for a human being to utter his name three times, and he gets summoned into the world of the living.

Beutelgeuse dreams of marrying Lydia, a union which would give him a firm place amongst the mortals, while permanently confining Lydia to the realm of the dead – but you would only gather this if you watched the original film, in one of the movies countless plot holes. It is never clear why he can’t marry someone else. Surely times have changed in 36 years. Maybe Beutelgeuse could be tempted by a same-sex union? Not in Tim Burton’s fantasy world, which remains as socially conservative as ever (defined by the old-fashioned marriage, with opulent wedding dresses et al). Even Lydia’s daughter falls into the same matrimonial trap as her mother, after meeting a lonely and good-looking neighbour of around her age called Jeremy. He has a very dirty secret in store for the loving teen.

Most male characters are toxic and duplicitous. Beutelgeuse, Rory and Jeremy do not offer their intended female counterparts comfort and redemption. Instead, they seek to suck the life out of them. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sets out to paint marriage as an inescapable ambuscade for women. The problem is that the female characters envisage no way out, and end up ambushed in their own nightmares (which we see in the movie’s final scene).

Relying on a film from 36 years earlier – a time when half of film-lovers of today were not even born – is a tricky business, even if the two leads are reprised by the original actors (Keaton and Ryder). While widely recognised as one of Tim Burton’s best films, Beetlejuice (1988) is not a universally-known movie. Many of the developments of its 21st century sequel relate directly to the minutiae of a story most have neither seen or barely remember (I belong firmly to the latter, being a child at the time). The outcome is that it’s often impossible to make head or tail – or feet, hand, any other body part – of the story. A fantasy movie should be a beast in its own right. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice can barely stand on its feet.

The story is as disjointed as Delores’s body (she was cut to pieces by Beutelgeuse, who was once her husband). The difference is that Delores manages to put herself back together with a staple gun, something the two writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar never achieve (they were never involved in the original project from nearly four decades ago). The outcome is a Frankenstein of a film script, horribly torn between priorities: it doesn’t know whether to focus on Lydia’s lacklustre love life (Rory proposes to her during her father’s funeral, and insists that the ceremony should take place in two days, on Halloween), Astrid’s adolescent frustrations, Betelgeuse’s evil marriage plans, Delores’s thirst for revenge, Delia’s futile endeavours, and so on. The abundance of subplots prevents the story from reaching its full potential, untimately strangling it.

Burton’s trademark’s are all there. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice injects the subject of death with love, colour and humour. The groovy, eclectic soundtrack includes everything from Brian Adams to Sugar Ros, with no shortage of soul tunes, swinging spirits and corpses. Morbid selfie-lovers get sucked in by their mobile devices, in the movie’s most hilarious scene and perhaps its only attempt at modern-day social commentary – the problem is that this event too is narratively disconnected from other developments. Ultimately, Burton’s latest creation feels like a patchwork of Tim Burton’s eerie silly idiosyncrasies, and a tribute to the 66-year-old filmmaker. A cute little movie with abundant embellishments and little substance.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opened at the 81st Venice International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. In cinemas on Friday, September 6th. On VoD on Monday, October 21st.