Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

I am going to take a little time and write about something that makes me sad. Let it be known that I am a Tim Burton fan. Being a child of the ‘90s and raised on Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), how could I not be right? Burton has been responsible for some beautiful films in cinematic history, the most famous being Edward Scissorhands (1990) and his adaptation of Batman (1989). His delightfully quirky and gothic tastes colour many of my favourite films. What makes me sad is the idea that Tim Burton is no longer the man making beautiful films such as Big Fish (2003) or quirky films such as Beetlejuice (1988). 

As much as it hurts to say it, Tim Burton has become an aesthetic: an enticing candy wrapper encompassing a mediocre hardboiled sweet with no surprise centre. Whilst these thoughts had already started to form when I saw Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) (which is not a Burton movie, but does aim to resemble one aesthetically), they took clearer form when I went and saw Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. 

The film’s protagonist is Jake, an awkward and ordinary teen whose only happiness is his relationship with his grandfather. But when his grandfather dies mysteriously, Jake’s ordinary life gets peculiar when he travels to an island of his grandfather’s childhood to try and find the children’s home he grew up in. Once there, he discovers more than just the damaged remains: he discovers all his grandfather’s childhood friends, still the same age as they were in the 1940s. Living in a time loop, Miss Peregrine and her peculiar children exist happily secluded from the rest of the world, but soon they are under attack from the foe that killed Jake’s grandfather and Jake learns that he’s not ordinary; in his own peculiar way he can save them all. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this premise, this story, these characters, or anything about this series of books. Thematically, they are exactly the type of thing that Burton gravitates towards: children as heroes, different characters not conforming to norms, and intergenerational relationships (quite Dahl-esque really). Sadly, what lets this movie down is its lack of narrative flow, various plot holes and jagged pacing, and unstable/boring characters. We saw the exact same thing happen in Dark Shadows (2012) where we had these potentially interesting characters just not rise up to where they should have been and thus, were flat, boring, and unable to pique any sort of audience rapport. It’s hard to pinpoint whether this is due to a lack of direction, communication with the actors, or effort on the screenwriter’s part, but what ends up happening is that we get this movie that has all these fascinating characters (gorgans, an invisible boy, a fire-starter, a re-animator, a girl who controls air, etc) and you can’t bring yourself to root for any of them. They’re just plain and it really does feel as though no one in this movie really cares about it. And if they don’t care about it, why should we? 

Then we have the jagged pacing and the various plot holes. A slow character introduction and expositional build-up, which then leads to a chaotic and unbalanced third act does not make for a great movie experience, especially when certain points of the narrative ‘rules’ seem to contradict themselves. We all know that time travel is a very fiddly concept to deal with in terms of books and movies and a lot of the film’s narrative problems come in the form of conflicting time travel exposition and execution. 

I suppose, to be fair the performances were all fine, Eva Green and Samuel L. Jackson are definite sort-of-redemptions for everything else and the Burton aesthetic is totally there, though not as vibrant as vintage ‘90s Burton. This totally is thanks to costume designer Colleen Atwood who is a long-time Burton collaborator. 

Visually, the film is quite cool with some great achievements in both costume and art design as well as computer wizardry. The ‘Hollows’ are pretty cool creations, if somewhat reminiscent of Pan’s Labyrinth and Harry Potter. 

At the end of the day, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is not a bad movie, but it does suffer from some recognisable problems that seem to shape Burton’s later films. To simplify, it looks good on the outside, but doesn’t match on the inside. 

Starring: Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Ella Purnell, Finlay MacMillan, Lauren McCrostie, Hayden Keeler-Stone, George Pemberton, Milo Parker, Raffiella Chapman, Chris O’Dowd, Allison Janney, Rupert Everett, Terence Stamp, Samuel L. Jackson, and Judi Dench. 

Rating: PG.