Beetlejuice, an idiosyncratic comedy directed by Tim Burton, was an unexpectedly big hit in 1988. Its producers immediately set about developing a sequel. That sequel has now arrived, some 36 years later. Beetlejuice was Burton’s second feature as director; the amusingly named Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is his 20th. For that amount of time, development, and experience, one would be forgiven for expecting something better.

The new film picks up on the life of Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), now a professional medium, widowed, a mother to teenager Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and in a relationship with television producer Rory (Justin Theroux). When a family tragedy draws Lydia and her stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) back to the town of Winter River – and a new encounter with the undead bio-exorcist Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton).

This is a film with problems, and they are pretty much exclusive to the screenplay (credited to Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Seth Grahame-Smith). There is a common problem with films that become trapped in development: each subsequent crack at a storyline fails to build consensus, but elements from each hang around like creative detritus. Either too many people are in love with specific characters or set pieces, or someone along the corporate ladder holds onto elements like a dog with a bone, but the filmed result is clouded with messy storylines that lie partially resolved. Watch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and you can recognise the draft where Betelgeuse returns to torment Lydia again, as well as the draft where his diabolical ex-wife (Monica Bellucci) vengefully hunts him down. You can see a few tattered remains of the draft about how Lydia lives her life constantly hounded by lost and abandoned spirits. There is a particularly good draft somewhere in the mix that focuses on Astrid becoming drawn into the undead world, so that Betelgeuse is Lydia’s only recourse in saving her.

Any one of these plots in isolation could have made this an entertaining picture. With all of them half-heartedly competing for space, the result is honestly a difficult mess: difficult to follow, difficult with which to engage, and difficult to like. The cast are great, with each returning actor recreating their 1988 character with fidelity. Tim Burton uses plenty of old-fashioned physical effects to make the film feel a lot closer to his 20th century films than his 21st century ones. Sadly it all relies on that damned screenplay.

The film is also oddly obsessed with explaining away the absence of original film father Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones), in a way that wastes time and is unusually cruel to the character. Fellow absentees Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) are explained away in a sentence.

The whole concept of the “legacy sequel”, in which old intellectual property from 30 or 40 years ago is revived for a belated follow-up, desperately needs retiring. It is not simply a matter of not wanting sequels. Some of my favourite films are sequels. It is that hit-to-miss ratio of the form is simply not high enough to bother. In the entire history of legacy sequels, I think the only ones that have completely worked to my satisfaction are The Color of Money (1986) Tron Legacy (2010), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). The likes of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are too high a price to get them.