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Director Tim Burton’s career since 1999’s Sleepy Hollow has been spotty at best, but Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is one of the brighter spots in his 21st century output. Asa Butterfield (Hugo) stars as Jake, an awkward teenager who falls in with a group of gifted, mutant children and their supernatural guardian, Miss Peregrine (Eva Green). Peregrine and the children voluntarily live in a 24-hour time loop in 1943, where they are safe from monsters called Hollowgasts that want to eat their eye balls (literally). Jake discovers he has the ability to see the Hollowgasts, which are invisible to everyone else. This comes in handy when the monsters, led by a a fiendish Samuel L. Jackson, break into the time loop and capture Miss Peregrine, forcing Jake and the peculiar children to launch a rescue mission.
Miss Peregrine, based on a book by Ransom Riggs, is obviously inspired by both Harry Potter and X-Men, but manages to establish a distinct tone and flavor that benefits from Tim Burton’s whimsical stylings. The plot is tangled, messy, and sometimes hard to follow, but there are a lot of interesting ideas and characters at play. The story might be more engaging if it were an hour longer or split into two movies. It would be worth exploring some of Jake’s relationships more deeply, particularly with the mysterious Miss Peregrine, his grandfather (Terence Stamp), and a peculiar girl (Ella Purnell) who has to wear iron shoes to keep from floating away.
The casting is uniformly good, with Eva Green (Casino Royale) finding the right balance between charming and alarming as the title character, a Willy Wonka-like character the actress referred to as “Scary Poppins”. Butterfield carries the film admirably on his young shoulders, and Samuel L. Jackson gives a commendable, darkly comedic turn as the film’s ultimate baddie. Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, and Allison Janney appear in small roles. Production design, costuming, and cinematography are all at Burton’s high standards. Mike Higham and Matthew Margeson provide a solid score in lieu of Burton’s regular composer, Danny Elfman, who was busy scoring Alice Through the Looking Glass. Florence + The Machine provide a nice end title song.
With Chris O’Dowd as Jake’s feckless father, Lauren McCrostie as a peculiar girl able to set fires by the touch of her bare hand, and Finlay MacMillan as a peculiar boy able to bring inanimate objects to life.