Film · Prime Video · 1988

Beetlejuice

Funny, and the joke has a predator in it. Adults. Not the children.

Adam and Barbara are decent, recently dead, and too polite to haunt effectively. The Deetzes are rude in a way the film enjoys. Beetlejuice is not a scamp. He is a creature who wants a living girl for a bride, and the comedy keeps inviting you to find that charming. Lydia is a child in a black dress, not a punchline, and the film is at its best when the dead couple become her guardians.

Watch it grown, if you watch it. Do not hand the bio-exorcist to a ten-year-old as a friend. The friends are the quiet ghosts. The other one is a summons you should not make.

The eight

Industry
4/10
They are learning a craft of haunting, badly.
Household
6/10
A dead marriage, still kind. A girl who needs a household.
Piety
3/10
A bureaucratic afterlife, played as a joke. The demon is not a joke.
Courage
5/10
They finally fight for the girl.
Republic
3/10
A handbook of the dead. No republic.
Temperance
3/10
The film's appetite for the grotesque outruns the story.
Truth
6/10
He is dangerous. They learn it late.
Stewardship
6/10
The good act is protecting Lydia, not reclaiming the décor.

Live historicallyDo not invite a worse thing in to solve a rude neighbor.

Film · Prime Video · 1992

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

A joke that stumbled into a vocation. Lighter than the later series. The duty is the part to keep.

The film thinks the joke is that the slayer is a mall girl. The joke turns, a little, when the mall girl accepts a repetitive, unfashionable job of keeping other people alive. That turn is the seed of the better television story. The movie itself is thin, camp, and not a theology. Vampires here are mostly an excuse.

A teenager can watch it without being handed a worldview, which is more than can be said for many darker heirs. Say the one line if you watch it together. Being chosen is not a style. It is a chore that continues after the dance.

The eight

Industry
4/10
The slaying is a job she did not apply for.
Household
4/10
Friends, lightly. Little family.
Piety
3/10
A destiny played as a gag.
Courage
6/10
She goes into the alley.
Republic
4/10
A town with a night problem.
Temperance
5/10
Silly more than cruel.
Truth
5/10
The joke does not fully eat the duty.
Stewardship
5/10
The heirloom is the chore, not the outfit.

Live historicallyIf you are the one nearest the alley, you do not get to stay only pretty.