10 Best Ghost Story Movies

While there is clearly a case to be made for Ghostbusters being the greatest ghost-themed comedy of them all (we've already declared it one of the most rewatchable movies ever), no comedy - and indeed, few movies overall - have gone to such lengths to show things from the ghosts' point of view than Beetlejuice.

Tim Burton's 1988 film also went some way to setting the tone for the director's idiosyncratic career, with its blend of madcap humour and macabre weirdness. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin star as a recently deceased couple whose afterlife is made unbearable when metropolitan snobs the Deetzes (Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O'Hara) take up residence in the house to which their immortals souls are bound forever.

But of course, the show is very much stolen by Michael Keaton in the title role as the anarchic, hyper-energetic 'bio-exorcist' hired to scare the living away - but whose main interest is in plotting his own resurrection, via an unholy union with the Deetzes' daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder, in the role that inspired a generation of Goth girls).

Beetlejuice presents a rich, colourful, detailed vision of the afterlife unlike anything shown on film before, to which subsequent films such as Burton's own Corpse Bride, and more recently Pixar's Coco, clearly owe a debt.