Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

Peculiar children in faded old photographs, a mansion that endlessly repeats a single frozen day, and the mysterious woman who guards it. You might wonder whether any source material could suit Tim Burton’s worldview better than this; Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a work soaked through with the director’s taste. Burton’s signature sensibility, dark and grotesque yet somehow tender, layers precisely over the story of children trapped in a time loop.

What it’s about — A loop repeating one day in 1943

Jake (Asa Butterfield), an ordinary teenager, dismissed his grandfather’s tales of peculiar children as mere old stories. But after his grandfather’s sudden death, he follows the traces of those tales to a remote island in Wales. There exists a time loop that endlessly repeats a single day in 1943. Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), who guards the loop, and children each possessing unusual abilities live within it. A girl lighter than air who must tie herself down with rope, a girl who conjures fire from her hands, a boy with a beehive inside his body. This once-peaceful refuge begins to be threatened by monstrous beings who covet the children’s abilities, and Jake realizes that he too possesses a special gift.

Direction — Burton’s art moving between fairy tale and horror

What stands out most in Burton’s direction is the art and atmosphere. The Victorian mansion, the fog-shrouded island, and the faded-photograph color palette dress this story, which moves between fairy tale and horror, in just the right attire. The time-loop premise is also realized in visually interesting ways; the scene where the children casually field a bomb that falls at the same hour every day evokes the uncanny and the cozy at once.

The amusement-park duel in the second half is the passage where Burton’s imagination unfolds most freely. This sequence, where invisible monsters and a skeleton army tangle, recalls the sensation of turning the pages of a scary picture book in childhood. That said, in cramming the source novel’s complex time rules into a film of just over two hours, there’s a regret that the premise grows somewhat disorderly toward the end. Even so, the skill of crafting atmosphere remains as enchantingly Burton-esque as ever.

Performance — Eva Green, combining dignity and motherhood

The center of this film is unquestionably Eva Green. The Miss Peregrine she plays is strict yet warm, elegant yet resolute. To this mysterious figure who moves between the form of a bird and the figure of a human, Green grants both a curious dignity and a maternal quality, becoming the pillar that holds up the entire film. Asa Butterfield calmly portrays a boy lacking confidence who gradually finds his place. Samuel L. Jackson appears as a white-eyed villain, adding a smug menace, and the floating girl played by Ella Purnell leaves a strong impression both visually and emotionally.

What the film says — Flowing time instead of a frozen day

This work tells, in the language of a fairy tale, a story about not fearing being different. The peculiar children possess abilities the world does not welcome, but because of those very abilities they understand one another and become a family. The process of Jake doubting his ordinariness yet finally accepting his specialness reads as a coming-of-age narrative of affirming oneself just as one is. At the same time, the question of whether to remain within an eternally frozen day or to let time flow and take on its dangers serves as a metaphor for the choice between safe stagnation and uneasy growth.

Ratings and reception

The IMDb rating is 6.7 out of 10, the support level of a solid box-office hit. The Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 65% and the Metacritic score is 57 out of 100. Critics highly rated the rich art direction and Eva Green’s performance while pointing to the increasingly complicated premise and the unkempt development of the second half as limitations. It’s a work that received a somewhat mixed evaluation, where praise and disappointment coexist.

Verdict

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is not a perfectly smooth film. The premise tangles somewhat in the second half, and it can’t capture all the depth of its source. But the grotesque, beautiful world only Tim Burton could craft, and the enchantment the actor Eva Green creates, more than cover those flaws. For those who, even as adults, miss the eerie charm of a fairy tale, this work is a welcome gift. For that emotional satisfaction, I give it ★4.0.

Recommended for

• Those who like Tim Burton’s signature dark, fantastical art direction
• Those looking for fantasy with a mood mixing fairy tale and horror
• Those who want to see Eva Green’s enchanting performance