Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was a contemporary fantasy novel by American author, Ransom Riggs. Told through a mixture of vernacular and found photography from archival collections of the author, the story about a young boy following the stories and photos of his recently deceased grandfather to discover a hidden school for ‘peculiar’ children stuck in a time loop, was one that was generally praised by critics for its creative usage of photography and good characterization and setting, enough so that it led to its own film version made in 2016. With directed Tim Burton behind the helm of director and with a source material that feels ripe for the picking when it comes to having creative visuals, this feels like something that should make for weird delicious eye-candy, unfortunately that isn’t what was delivered come release. After his grandfather suffers a brutal and unexpected death, Jake Portman (played by Asa Butterfield) finds that the crazy stories that his grandfather once told him might be true when he finds a letter from Miss Peregrine, the head mistress of the school that he always talked about. Going to a remote island to hopefully find closure, Jake discovers Miss Peregrine (played by Eva Green) and her school filled with peculiar children that have strange magical powers. Existing within a time loop in 1943 before a war bomb destroys their house, the school is suddenly put under threat by Mr. Barron (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who is trying to extract the eyes of peculiar children in order to counter-act a failed experiment which left him without a human form. With Peregrine captured and the loop on the house broken, Jake along with the children have to find her and stop the Barron before he gets stuck in the 1940s. While the movie was met with mixed reception upon its release, the movie was quickly forgotten about after its release and its poor marketing making it look more like a Harry-Potter knock-off more than anything. The handling of the movie took what could have been interesting and generalized it so much that a lot of those peculiar elements didn’t matter.

The flow of the story goes in a format very much like this; the first 30-mins is insanely boring, bland-looking, and generic, with no interesting characters, awkward acting, bad storytelling, and ugly visuals. As soon as the movie reaches the school, it picks up a bit with a few interesting concepts, better visuals, acting and concepts, and overall becomes more engaging. Then it falls apart with a rushed villain, poorly paced climax, and anti-climactic feel. With these specific issues in mind, it makes the movie feel very sporadic and makes it incredibly hard to judge it overall. The writer for the movie, Jane Goldman, has worked on movies like X-Men: The First Class, and Kingsman; two movies that feel engrossed within a forty’s atmosphere and one that this movie actually captures decently enough. While its not utilized as often as should have been, moments that are meant to capture the 40s style feels in spirit through the clothing and color scheme. Despite that being an element that really works with the writer, this script is extremely emotionally hollow and creates a story were no consequences are felt and no-one loses anything. The pacing is also really poorly handling; with a first act that lasts way too long, a middle section that doesn’t last long enough, and an ending that feels rushed, unfocused and minimal in stakes. The movie does have some nice creative ideas (the concept of the time-loops and its connection to the house is pretty neat), and there’s even a concept here about the school being a metaphorical safe haven for people who are viewed as different or ”special” by society and need to be treated differently in order to fit in, but any attempts at trying to market the movie like a Potter film goes against what the book feels like it was trying to be.

The characters aren’t used to their best potential, but some of them could have been done a lot worst. The handling of them isn’t wrong in the same sense as some of the characters are, but they are misused in a different way. Asa Butterfield starts off really bad as the lead kid, with a real bad delivery and completely monotone voice. He gets better as the movie goes on, but even still, its nothing special by the end. AT first it seems like a directing problem as even classical actors like Terrence Stamp sound really bad to beginning with. But as soon as they reach the school, things start to pick up. All the kids are acted fairly well, and they definitely work more as crazy powers than actual characters as none of them outside of a few are given ample time to develop into a character. Eva Green as Miss Peregrine is kind of half and half; she’s very much a headmistress version of Mary Poppins with her somewhat cold exterior mix with a magical ambiguous aura surrounding her. The performance is perfectly fine, but the character doesn’t have much to her and only becomes a plot device by the end of the movie. The villain is also handled pretty bad, coming in around the end of the second act as well as having a pretty weak motivation and backstory. Samuel L. Jackson is an iconic actor, but he is really miscast here, he never feels like scientist and it feels like he’s just trying whatever he can think because he wasn’t given very good direction.

The visuals for the movie are pretty tricky to determine whether or not they are fully realized or not. At first, the movie seems incredibly washed-out and devoid of color (all except for the school which there is at least) with the movie only using blues and greys for its color scheme. However, with the book’s usage of sepia surrealist form of photography, it may have been trying to mirror that style with this contrast. It doesn’t exactly work because even though the visuals at the school are better, they are interesting or wild enough to be an effective contrast. The CG usage on the monsters aren’t anything that special and make the monsters look a little more ‘’video gamey’’ than anything really threatening. It’s a shame that a story and material that should pave way for several different and creative visuals doesn’t have anything that dramatically creative to look at in this movie; the powers are standard, the monsters are generic, even the time travelling element is done in a very bland way. The tone of the movie is a major mess; what could be treated as an almost kids’ horror movie is treated too ‘’fantasy novel’’ like to the point where it feels like this was targeted towards the teenage crowd. But with this in mind, seeing eyeless dead people doesn’t really fit within his PG tone either so its completely a mess.

This movie wants to come across a strange and (dare I say it) peculiar, but it just comes across as safe and generic. Its weird to think that who was once one of the directors you go to for the wildly strange and crazy, is now doing movies that takes away creative and sticks with very generic plots. Whether or not the problems go further than that, this movie is nothing special and doesn’t really have much worth seeing that you can’t see in any other fantasy story. The actors start pretty shaky but find a stable middle ground by the end, the school itself and anything connected to that middle period is the only stuff worth watching, and even though its generic, there’s nothing really harmful in it that would be wrong for kids. Either way, the saddest truth about this movie is that what you’re going to get out of this movie is really predictable, completely unengaging, and the further thing away from peculiar.