What ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ gets right about grief and death

Most people don’t like to talk about death.
It’s an understandable aversion: contemplating or discussing the most final of endings can do more than dampen the mood. The subject can be fraught with fear, awkwardness and sadness.
However, in a movie like “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the sequel to 1988’s “Beetlejuice,” death is everywhere − literally. (Consider yourself warned: Light spoilers for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” ahead!)
Significant portions of the new film (in theaters now) take place in the Afterlife, where the dead go after their earthly days are finished. And Charles Deetz (played by Jeffrey Jones in the original movie), who has died rather suddenly in a series of gory events, is headed to the Afterlife waiting room in the beginning of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
From there, the film explores how his death affects his family and the events his passing sets off.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
It’s hard to know how you’ll feel or react when a close family member or friend dies.
Maybe you’ll cry uncontrollably. Maybe you’ll feel numb − or nothing at all. Perhaps you’ll fall into an existential black hole, pondering the meaning of life.
But not Charles’ widow, Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara), artist and stepmom to Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder). When he dies, she declares they will have a “grief collective.”
Sign up for our Watch Party newsletter:We deliver the best movie and TV recommendations to your inbox
This collective seems to be more than an extended mourning period or repast gathering. Beyond a wake and a funeral, Delia is planning several culturally rooted ceremonies to honor her late husband, with one of the ill-advised rituals to include real snakes. A sorrowful rendition of Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat” (basically the theme of the first movie) is sung by a youth choir at the burial. The Winter River home that Delia hated but Charles loved so much is where the mourners gather and is shrouded in black cloth for the occasion.
And Delia is just getting started. The character, whose work as an artist seems to have exploded into success since we last saw her, has always been drawn to the dramatic and a desire for attention.
Delia is self-centered, sure, but she’s onto something with her grief collective.
Her actions may seem as if she’s just using his death to make it all about her, wailing and bluntly voicing her opinions, but the events are all about Charles. She goes back to the town she dislikes for him. She brings the family together and insists they connect with each other. And she laments how lost she is without Charles, how much he really meant to her.
Delia might be grieving just as much, if not more, than anyone.
Grief is tricky, and it’s different for everyone. And even for one person, the deaths of different people can affect them in opposing ways.
But maybe the trickiest thing about grief is how we sometimes avoid admitting we even feel it. Delia’s grief collective is almost like a freeing permission to be dramatic and loud about grief instead of pretending we’re unaffected.
Stop lying to your children about death.Why you need to tell them the truth.
The grief collective also insists on celebrating the person who has passed, their legacy and the things they loved about life, even if they aren’t the things you love.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” reminds us a few times that life can be fleeting, death is (mostly) permanent and that, most importantly, life is for the living.