Step Into The World Of 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' At Its East Coast Filming Locations

Director Tim Burton knows his way around sleepy New England locales, or at least the cinematic representation of them. In 1988, he put the quaint Vermont village of East Corinth up on the big screen in his Oscar-winning horror comedy, "Beetlejuice." As part of the real-life town of Corinth (population: 1,455), its rolling green hills stood in for the fictional Connecticut town of Winter River. In 2024, while Corinth marked its 260th anniversary, Burton reintroduced moviegoers to the village's crisp fall colors in the long-awaited sequel, "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."

Starring Michael Keaton as the titular "ghost with the most," "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" shot its interior scenes on five soundstages at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England. The production facility adjoins one of the world's most popular Harry Potter attractions. Leavesden is also where Burton filmed his 1999 adaptation of "Sleepy Hollow," though the actual village that inspired Washington Irving's foundational American short story is a perfect fall day trip from New York City. Despite the disconnect between his dark fantasy films and some of their real-world settings, Burton was reportedly adamant about returning stateside to East Corinth to shoot exterior scenes for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" in the original movie location.

Filming began in mid-2023, only to be interrupted by the actors' strike in Hollywood that summer. In terms of travel inspiration, the delayed completion of "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" in Vermont and the city of Melrose, Massachusetts, may have ultimately worked to the film's advantage. Instead of the uniform green of summer, the backdrop showcases orange, brown, and red, like you would see during the leaf peeping season in autumn.

Tim Burton's pilgrimage back to East Corinth for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" is paralleled on-screen by Winona Ryder and Katherine O'Hara's returning characters, Lydia and Delia Deetz, as they go home to Winter River for a funeral. At one point, Lydia's daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), takes a cycling tour of the town, and you can do that, too, by renting an e-bike from the East Corinth General Store. You can even have a bike delivered to your luxury campsite if you stay at the Winter River Glampground, which nods to the movie's setting with its name. The owner is one of the locals who appeared as a background extra in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."

The Blake Memorial Library in East Corinth has a collection of old production photos from when the original "Beetlejuice" came to town back in the late 1980s. In these pictures, which the library has digitized on Flickr, you can see how the red covered bridge and white hilltop house from the movie were specially constructed before filming began. The sets were rebuilt for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," but they're not permanent fixtures of East Corinth.

You can, however, see how the original bridge cover has been repurposed locally as a storage barn at the volunteer-run ski area, Northeast Slopes. In the first movie, a car crashed through the side of it and made ghosts of the Maitlands, played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin. Today, it houses a farm truck engine that helps power North America's oldest continuously operating rope tow, which has been pulling skiers up white, snow-covered hills at Northeast Slopes since the winter of 1936.

One East Corinth location that's still a dead ringer (no pun intended) for how it appeared in "Beetlejuice" is Miss Shannon's School for Girls. The building, which is over a hundred years old, was by turns an authentic schoolhouse and a Masonic lodge before movie fan Kendall Gendron purchased it in 2022. It makes a cameo return in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" as Astrid rides her bike past it. Offscreen, the aim of Gendron's nonprofit Miss Shannon's School House is to renovate the historic building and turn it into a community center and tourist attraction.

East Corinth could maybe use more of the latter to help it live up to the picturesque aerial shots in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice." While in town filming in 2023, one movie crew member described the village as "no man's land," commenting to VTDigger, "There's nothing to do around here. At all." Still, a "Beetlejuice" diehard (again, no pun intended) or a road-tripper passing through on a scenic drive in Vermont could find this a worthwhile stop. Yet it's not the only New England filming location for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."

The production also moved to the Boston suburb of Melrose for a few days, where it filmed scenes for a subplot involving Astrid and a teen ghost. A red house on the corner of Charles and Oakland Street served as the main focus, with a crooked, Burtonesque treehouse being set up in the yard. Two other key locations, Astrid's boarding school and the church and graveyard where her grandfather's funeral take place, were respectively filmed at the Temple Dinsley and West Wycombe estates in Hitchin and Buckinghamshire, England.