By: Miguel Ernesto Yusty

Beetlejuice, a 1988 film directed by Tim Burton, tells the story of a ghost who works as an exorcist, scaring the living out of haunted houses. His work turns the ghost community against him, ultimately leading to the end of his business. The film solidified Burton's distinctive style and demonstrated that horror could evoke reactions ranging from panic and fascination to tenderness. It is available on Amazon Prime, the streaming service that offers a wide variety of classic and quality films, while also producing its own original content, released monthly.

Beetlejuice, which translates to "beetle juice," is also the drama of a ghostly couple whose house is invaded by living people. They want to force them to leave and call in a professional scarer. It's a metaphor for individuals who are different from the rest of society and don't want their privacy violated. Beetlejuice represents the struggle of those who defend their right to be different, using their qualities and charms to earn the right to decide how to live their lives. It's also the drama of the director himself, Tim Burton, a "weird" and introverted guy who enjoys art and horror stories, but who in the real world works as an artist, not a murderer or a criminal, even though his stories deal with these themes.

BEETLEJUICE premiered in the late 1980s and marked the beginning of a prodigious decade for Burton. During these years, the director connected with the young teenagers who would become adults in the 1990s. His background as an animator and as a character and set designer would become the aesthetic foundation of his films. His formal refinement allowed him to make the strange appealing, transforming it into a quality that influenced the behavior of his fans. Therefore, those who watch a film like BEETLEJUICE and identify with one of its characters enter the realm of their own inner world, where they can think the most terrible thoughts and desire the most bizarre things without fear of punishment. With his work, Burton makes the horrifying beautiful and allows viewers to revel in what makes them strange, because in his films, being different is the defining characteristic of his protagonists.