“Home! Home! Home!” is what I wanted to shout in the theater around a quarter of the way through the travesty of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

But let me back up a minute. In the year 1988, Beetlejuice burst on the scene from the incredible directorial mind of Tim Burton. Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara brought so much effort, excitement and story to their characters that it was solidified as a household name for the ages. 36 years later we, finally, get a sequel and I have to say that I’ve not been so utterly crestfallen, so disappointed, so disgusted at studio cinema than I have after sitting through that train wreck.

I counted roughly 7 minutes of actual entertainment. The rest was a disjointed, poorly scripted, poorly executed romp through the nostalgia of a gullible generation who (like myself) would flock to the theaters and pay for that drivel.

The storyline didn’t exist. The characters were shadows of what they once were, the ones who were able to show up, and nothing made sense for a film that could have been a slam dunk.

But, and this is the whole reason why I’m writing a studio film review on my website, that’s the point of the Hollywood Studio Cinema Complex. It doesn’t exist to tell good stories. It exists to make money.

Producers know that we will spend money on nostalgia and they have religiously served us up heaping piles of garbage to spend our hard earned money on and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is no exception.

What’s with the soulless stories, the shiny object syndrome, and the sheer lack of any respect for the newer generation? Do they think that young adults are so stupid that they would think this garbage is cinema?

The studio system makes $100,000,000 memes, and bad ones at that. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reportedly cost $100M to make and I’d wager that almost none of it was spent on script, story or development. And that’s the harsh truth about modern studio filmmaking: it’s no longer about crafting timeless, memorable stories. It’s about cashing in on nostalgia and distracting us with empty spectacle.

But here’s the good news—there’s a growing world outside of this bloated machine. Independent filmmakers are proving, time and time again, that passion, creativity, and a real love for storytelling still exist.

The future of cinema isn’t in the hands of billion-dollar studios, it’s in the hearts of the filmmakers who care about the craft. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t just a failure—it’s a loud, neon sign pointing us to where the real magic is happening: independent cinema.

This “review” is a love story to indie film. It’s an obituary on the studio garbage. Let the swan song of independent films sing out. There are people out there, young and old, crafting stories with passion, with zeal, with the love of cinema beating at the very heart of them. Those are the voices that need amplified. Those are the voices that need nurtured.

That’s what Film Fervor is all about.

#SUPPORTINDIEFILM