‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’ review: “Wondrous throughout.”

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children review: Has Tim Burton returned to form with this adaptation of the 2011 novel by American author Ransom Riggs?

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children review by Luke Ryan Baldock.

Tim Burton has certainly had a tumultuous time in his film career. Being picked from near obscurity to direct Batman after a two bonkers directorial features and animating at Disney, he has seesawed between just about every imaginable form of adaptation. From his ill fated reimagining of Planet of the Apes, his own take on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a sequel of sorts to Alice in Wonderland, and even an animated remake of one of his own shorts, no matter what the final product he always has his own style. Now he jumps into his first YA adaptation, a genre that has itself seen a fair few failures. Luckily that YA adaptation is this well-suited horror with superhero stylings.

The titular home of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, is a place kept in a time-loop where children with strange abilities live to stay safe from eyeball eating monsters known as hollows. Asa Butterfield plays Jake, our entry-point into this bizarre world, as a young man labeled with ‘mental health problems’ after discovering his deceased, eyeless grandfather (Terence Stamp). Many think he’s crazy, but with the encouragement of his psychiatrist (Allison Janey), Jake’s father (Chris O’Dowd), takes Jake to a remote island in Wales where his grandfather spent time as a child. There he discoveres the likes of weightless and air-controlling Emma (Ella Purnell) and time altering Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) who can also turn into a bird.

The plot, as basic as it may be, serves as a nice journey into the mind and emotions of all peculiar children. With X-Men: First Class writer Jane Goldman on script duties, she once again captures both the awkwardness and excitement of adolescence. Comparisons with Xavier’s School for the Gifted are not unwarranted, but Miss Peregrine’s has more fun by showing very odd ‘powers’ indeed, which range from the usual invisibility or super strength, up to having a monstrous mouth on the back of your head, or being able to project your dreams. Although many of the young-uns get involved in the film’s eventual climax, the film isn’t afraid to show that not all abilities are suited to every (and especially life threatening) situations.

Burton’s stamp is all over the film, but it never suffocates the source material. Relishing in the horror aspects of the script, Burton pushes the 12A rating to its limits, and reminds us of older and braver children’s films that knew kids like to be scared. Dead children being reanimated, villains chowing down on kids’ eyeballs, and ferocious transformation scenes all add to the genuine stakes the film sets out. Burton also returns to a more charming time of special effects, where although many set-pieces are still CGI, he has not bogged himself down in the need to be realistic. It adds an otherworldly take that recalls those magical moments from Beetlejuice.

With great humour courtesy of Goldman and an exceptionally enjoyable performance by Samuel L. Jackson as the film’s not completely competent villain. There are struggles within the film’s pacing, such as balancing world-building and mythology while distributing enough character motivation, but it sets up a franchise that will hopefully flourish and retain the creative team behind it. Gorgeous to look at, not afraid to scare, and wondrous throughout, this is what we’d like to see more of from Burton and film’s for the young in general.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children review by Luke Ryan Baldock, September 2016

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is released on 29th September.