Review of "bizarre" recommendation - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Ah, Tim Burton. What the f^ck happened to you?

This movie is based off the very recommendable book series of the same name from Ransom Riggs, and follows a kid named Jake (played by Asa Butterfield), as he travels to this Irish island following clues given by his recently brutally killed grandfather. On that island, he finds a time-looping school of “peculiar” children headed by the enigmatic Miss Peregrine, and Jake is introduced to a world of magic and horror.

I first watched this movie over someone’s shoulder on a plane to Atlanta. It looked great and really creepy, and I was curious about what it could be like, since I love the books. Then I bought it on DVD. And, I must say, if you watch this as a silent movie, maybe in black-and-white, it could be rad as hell. But as it is, it’s painful.

This group could have been awesome, but are reduced to bland and generic storytelling.

Easily my biggest issue with this movie is how illogical it feels. There are plenty of times in the movie where I think, “wait, how did that work? Why is this happening?”. Like in the final fight scene, one of the bad guys is just randomly, casually run over by a tram that anyone could see coming, and it’s like the writer couldn’t think of a way to get rid of that villain, so Tim Burton just summoned a random tram and killed him.

The lead romance in this movie is also really poorly executed. There’s no real chemistry between Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell, and while both of them are acting decently, there’s no sense of humanity or romance in their interactions, with most of their dialogue being the story’s exposition rather than romantic. In the books, these characters play off each other, often in fiery ways, and interact in a complex, mature way, but the film goes for cheap YA dystopian novel romance 101.

There’s also another random teenage crush storyline between the characters Enoch and Olive at one point, which wasn’t necessary to the main story in the slightest, but I thought was far more engaging given that they clearly had chemistry and the ability to play off each other, unlike Butterfield and Purnell. Despite appearing for about 1 minute of screen time, it’s somehow more compelling than an hour of the main romance. That’s saying a lot.

Additionally, the casting in this movie is really weird, and not in a good, Heath-Ledger-in-Dark-Knight weird. There are a ton of great actors in this movie, such as Rupert Everett, Terence Stamp, Judi Dench, Chris O’Dowd and Allison Janney, who are all immensely talented, but barely have any screen time and feel pointless (Hell, Everett’s character isn’t even given a name beyond “ornithologist” and appears for 60 seconds of screen time). Eva Green is also very odd as Miss Peregrine, feeling a lot less like the trustworthy matriarch of a group of 1940’s children, and more like a cousin of the Mad Hatter from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. The kids are pretty good, and Samuel L. Jackson is clearly enjoying himself a lot as the child-killing villain with an eye fetish, but overall the cast of this movie is disappointing to me.

Sam Jackson provides some very over-the-top relief as Barron.

I will give the movie some credit though; it looks really good from a visual standpoint. Tim Burton has held back his temptation to go full colour-orgy, and has instead gone for a more muted palette with the amazing cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. The movie uses light and shadow really well, and the costume and production design are very good. However, the CGI is very inconsistent, and the main villains of this movie – the Hollowgast – I think they look really dumb.

Slendersquid.

Overall, this movie was very disappointing for me. I would strongly recommend checking out the books, which I love for their visual aesthetic and cast of characters. But the movie could only carry part of the aesthetic across and leave everything else behind.

Anyway, what did you think of this movie? Are there any movies which had a synonym of weird in the title, and what are your bad and good ones? Leave them in the comments below.