When hearing the name Tim Burton, people’s minds automatically think of the iconic realms of “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Corpse Bride,” to name a few.
Creepy is the norm when it comes to Burton’s films. Usually audiences love his dark and quirky settings and characters. However, “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” goes a little overboard.
The opening credit sequence features aged and eerie photographs including an evil-seeming Santa Claus. Another creepy element of the film is that the villains eat the eyes of children and other peculiars.
The film focuses around Jake (Asa Butterfield), whose life is derailed after the mysterious death of his grandfather. Jake eventually finds himself in the fictional town in Cairnholm Island, Wales, in order to meet Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) of the children’s home. Several children reside in the home, all with ‘peculiar’ abilities, including invisibility, control over plants and a boy with bees living inside him.
At the home, Jake meets a floating girl named Emma (Ella Purnell), and romance soon brews between the two. The film also features Samuel L. Jackson as Barron, the leader of an evil group bent on killing the peculiar children at the home.
This movie is based off of the book of the same name written by Ransom Riggs. The film, of course, strays from the novel a bit, but the changes are relevant to the movie’s plot.
I am usually a huge fan of Tim Burton. His gothic fantasies usually appeal to my desire to escape my own realm of life, but this movie did not draw me in enough. It was a decent movie in my opinion, but I do not think it was executed in the best way possible.
According to Variety, the international box office during the opening weekend of the movie was much better at $36.5 million than in the U.S. with $28.5 million.
There are many critics who call this Burton film a dud. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored 64 percent and was rated 58 percent on Metacritic. More than half of the users on Rotten Tomatoes liked the film overall, but the book had much higher ratings. Based on Goodread reviews, 91 percent of the people who reviewed enjoyed the book.
With how so many people dislike the film and give it bad ratings, I do not expect it to receive any rewards or recognition. “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is overall a decent film, but will likely be reduced to just another movie in a Tim Burton marathon.
Rating: C-
