Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Certainly no one could be more suited than Tim Burton to direct the film adaptation of Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and that perfect marriage of auteur and material is both its blessing and its curse.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when Burton became a shadow of his former self since his output bears many of the hallmarks - an affinity for outsiders, an endearing goth sensibility, a Cabinet of Dr. Caligari meets John Waters aesthetic - are well in place. Yet there has been an increasing hollowness at his films' core which has neutered his seemingly limitless imagination. The advent of CGI-driven spectacles hasn't helped. Since Burton introduced the likes of Frankenweenie, Pee-Wee Herman, Beetlejuice, and Edward Scissorhands to the big screen, there have been the Harry Potter, X-Men, and countless other franchises where a band of outsiders are celebrated for their peculiarities. Not only does Burton have to compete with his own filmography, now he has to compete with whole universes of eccentrics and Miss Peregrine finds him sorely lacking.

The children that populate Miss Peregrine are indeed peculiar. There are the twins whose faces are hidden beneath burlap masks and whose special powers are withheld until the last possible moment. There's Claire (Raffiella Chapman), whose Shirley Temple ringlets hide the the extra mouth at the back of her head. Olive (Lauren McCrostie) is a firestarter whilst the brooding and sadistic Enoch (Finlay MacMillan), who is basically a Victor Frankenstein-in-training with his ability to vivify dead creatures and other objects. Emma (Ella Purnell) is lighter than air and has to wear heavy boots to literally keep her feet on the ground. They and the other peculiars are presided over by Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), an Ymbrynes who can turn into a falcon and who possesses the ability to create time loops - specifically for her and the children, it is always the 3rd of September, 1943, the day when Nazi bombers strike their home and render them all dead. By resetting time, Miss Peregrine ensures that everyone remains the same age and alive for all eternity.

That is if Barron (Samuel L. Jackson) and his group of bad peculiars don't discover their particular time loop and destroy them all to ensure their own longevity. Let's not forget the hollowgasts - pale, faceless, long-limbed, tentacle-tongued Jack Skellington-like creatures - who can only be seen and stopped by those with special abilities, someone like 16-year-old Jacob (Asa Butterfield), whose grandfather Abe's (Terence Stamp) dying words - go to the island, the bird will explain everything, I thought I could protect you - spur the teenager to travel from Florida to the Welsh island on which Miss Peregrine's orphanage is situated.

There are several impressive set pieces - the underwater sunken ship in which Emma reveals her power to control air; any scenes involving the hollowgasts, which are both stunning and creepy; and the finale which includes a skeleton battle that would make Ray Harryhausen proud. Yet these remarkable moments do not erase the film's pacing issues, Jacob's dullness as a lead character, a certain clumsiness in the plotting, and the overall dispassionate air that undergirds the proceedings.

Which is why Jackson is such a treat - he makes no concessions to Burton's vision in his performance, which is borderline bonkers. Jackson imposes his Samuel L. Jackson-ness with such ease that it exposes the fragility of Burton's ecosystem and one nearly roots for Barron to triumph over the mutant munchkins and feast on their eyeballs. His amused and exasperated rant as he's caught in Emma's gust of air is the film's comic highlight. If Jackson stands out because he doesn't fit Burton's mold, then Eva Green transfixes precisely because she does. If anything, she may be more than Burton can handle - her bewitching presence is such that the film palpably suffers whenever she's off-screen.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Directed by: Tim Burton

Written by: Jane Goldman; adapted from the book by Ransom Riggs

Starring: Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Samuel L. Jackson, Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, Allison Janney, Chris O'Dowd, Terence Stamp, Ella Purnell, Lauren McCrostie, Finlay MacMillan