The dossier
Chaos invited through a cracked door
Betelgeuse is a self-styled bio-exorcist who lives in the bureaucratic afterlife of Beetlejuice. He offers the recently dead Maitlands a way to frighten the new owners from their home, but every offer hides a price. His real goal is to exploit their situation so he can cross into the living world.
The character works as a disruptive force in a story about death, grief, and ownership. Betelgeuse turns fear into a performance and treats every rule as something to bend. His pursuit of Lydia makes the threat more personal because she is the living person most able to let him through.
Michael Keaton plays him with rapid shifts in voice, movement, and expression. The performance keeps the character comic while never making him safe. Fans enjoy the anarchic energy, but the film also makes clear that his charm is another form of manipulation.