Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is an Irresistible Display of Oddities

Miss Peregrine's Home is a really really FULL house.

Tim Burton Shows Us The Way of the Weird in Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children hit theatres September 2016, five years after Ransom Riggs published the novel of the same name. Instantly, we jump into intrigue in abundance. The title sequence features vintage photographs from Riggs’s collection. They establish ominous atmosphere and set a spooky tone, and tell the beginnings of a story that can’t be told in just words alone. They tell the tale of Abe Portman’s most unusual childhood and about his time spent in the home, on a distant Welsh island Cairnholm, run by a shape-shifting headmistress where Abe, a refugee who escaped from Nazi-occupied Poland, met some very unusual friends. Friends with rare abilities like Horace who could see into the future, Olive who could start a fire with just a thought, and Bronwyn who was strong enough to lift something five times her size.

Destination known.

Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield, Ender’s Game) is Abe’s grandson, and he knows his grandpa’s “peculiar children” stories by heart. Ever since he was a kid, he idolized his well-traveled, intelligent and quirky grandpa to the point where he believed with every fiber of his being that his grandpa’s stories were true. The opening of Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children finds us on an ordinary day in 16-year-old Jake’s life, stocking shelves in a boring drug store job. When his grandpa (Terence Stamp) frantically calls Jake, telling him that he’s been found, his life's in danger, and in a parting blow begs his grandson to stay away. Really, Gramps? REALLY?!

Of course, Jake ignores that nonsense and races to grandpa’s house. Finding it in ruins he scrambles out into the wooded backyard only to find Abe crumpled on the earth with something horrible heading away from him.There’s a science fiction quality to this creature: think Alien crossed with the Slender Man, that makes this monster look familiar yet still disturbing. It’s a twisted and leggy creature with a blind, wormy face and tentacles that burst out of its mouth.

These menaces are Hollowgasts, aka Hollows, and they prey on peculiar youngsters. By eating their eyeballs they devour the souls of the children and they get stronger and closer to evolving into something even more deranged: a Wight. A pointy-teethed, white-eyed, man-eating, being made even worse by how they look, talk and act like humans. But more on that later, gaters.

Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) and Jake (Asa Butterfield) clock in with Fiona.

In an instant, Jake’s life is turned upside-down, and as in many young-adult escapist flicks becomes entirely extraordinary when he realizes the monsters are real and Grandpa’s tales were true. We skip ahead to several months after grandpa’s violent death, where, with the encouragement of his therapist Dr. Golan (Allison Janney) Jake and his father Frank Portman (Chris O’Dowd) travel to Cairnholm, Wales so Jake can come to terms with his grandpa’s death, and, by finally seeing the fabled Miss Peregrine’s home, stop obsessing over it all.

Jake and Frank’s father-son dynamic is strained from the get-go, making Jake’s isolation and loneliness even more potent. O’Dowd is playing against type here as a no nonsense birding enthusiast and struggling author who has been chipping away at his first novel for years. He’s entirely hopeless at just having a simple chat with Jake, let alone make any effort in comforting him, adding liberal layers of drama to the story.

When Jake manages to track down the home he finds it splintered and split. The sorry remains of the once stately home hunch in a damaged slump and when he pokes around the sleepy seaside Cairnholm community, the villagers tell Jake that it’s the casualty of a set of bombs that fell in World War II. Those very same missiles wiped out all of the children and Miss Peregrine… Say WHAAA!?

Jake tromps though bogs and forest and moors.

Too curious to keep away, Jake returns to the ruins, only to be assaulted by a posse of peculiars. Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, Jake ends up in a fantastical new realm called a Loop. These are little pockets of time where the gifted children live in arrested time. Created by Ymbrynes these are places where headmistresses can turn into falcons, children have astounding abilities, and monsters are always on the prowl. Miss Peregrine’s  kids are known as “peculiars”. This isn’t novel. We’ve seen superkids over and over in books, movies and comics. The most obvious connection is Charles Xavier’s house in the X-Men universe that specializes in educating, protecting and training young mutants. But here, it’s different.

There’s a historical, and whimsical aspect to how the children use their abilities that speaks of the spectacle of freak shows and circuses from yesteryear. There’s a fanciful, theatrical even, nature to how they express their powers. Challenged by big baddie Barron (Samuel L. Jackson) the children band together to fend him and his army of Hollows off. Toeing the line between darkly funny, and deeply scary, Jackson’s performance is outstanding even if it is a bit of a one-dimensional display of evil.It’s riveting to watch him try to wreck the world of peculiardom.  

The family is all here! From left: Olive, Emma Enoch, Horace, Claire, Bronwyn, Fiona, Hugh, Twins, Millard.

Headlining the impressive cast is Eva Green as Miss Peregrine. Although distinctly a couple decades younger than the borderline elderly Alma Peregrine, Green embodies all of the ferocity and the resolve of the headmistress. The charismatic, crossbow-wielding and brainy Miss Peregrine created and maintains the Loop, and defends her charges. There’s a lot of artistry to her character design. Her winged eyeliner and coiffed blue-black hair is more than a little avian inspired. With seamless CGI transitions of her transforming, and Green’s exceptional acting chops, Miss Peregrine is irresistibly mysterious, charming and strong as hell. The other characters that inhabit this world are played by relative newcomers: studious and frequently naked invisible boy Millard (Cameron King); cute as a button curly haired Claire (Rafiella Chapman) with her “back mouth”; bee-inhabited Hugh (Milo Parker) who can belch out those buzzing bugs; and brutally strong but petite in stature Bronwyn (Pixie Davis) are just a few of the peculiar brood.  

Miss Peregrine. All BAMF. All the time.

The elder peculiars are the ones who get more screen time. They’ve also had some of their abilities tweaked. Enoch (Finlay MacMillan) is a creepy bloke. With heavy Scottish brogue, dark ringed eyes, and a penchant for raising the dead by zapping their hearts back to life, he’s a bit like a teen angsty Victor Frankenstein. Joined by sunny, and eager-to-please Olive (Lauren McCrostie) he often passes afternoons creating freaky little monsters to battle and bring to life. These disturbing little dolls are much like the claymation creatures in the opening title sequence of FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show. Aside from torching a pub with her fire-starting hands back in the beginning of the film, the rest of the time Olive is a giddy flirt, and absolutely smitten with Enoch. Her fawning admiration  is a performance that’s a bit one-note, but has the potential to be taken a step further in the continuing films.

Rounding out the elder peculiars trio is Emma Bloom (Ella Purnell). Olive’s original powers of levitation (being lighter than air!)  have been swapped with Emma’s firestarter skills. Yup. Emma’s pyrokinetic peculiarity has been replaced with the uncanny power of manipulating and controlling air. Emma’s spark has been literally taken away from her so that she can instead, float dreamily throughout the movie, oftentimes being tugged on a string pulled by Jake like a human kite. From the moment Jake slips her rope around her waist and intimately knots it close to her, to the scene where he wanders around the beach pulling her on her tether it’s clear as day that this is an attempt to show the chemistry between the two teens, to illustrate their budding romance. It’s sweet, yet in some ways it’s an odd sort of relationship. Especially considering Emma and Abe had a thing way back when.

Jake & Emma (Ella Purnell) peering over the garden wall.

It’s worth mentioning that Emma has great great great power in her: just catch that scene where she takes Jake to her sunken boat hide-away and in an amazingly rendered CGI scene, blasts out all of the water to make it habitable for them to hang out! Yet at times she’s also rendered a bit well...erm...helpless. The moment she unclips her weighted boots, she’ll be cast away with the breeze. But undeniably she’s a force of nature and Ella Purnell is a promising new actress to look out for!

Crafted by the esteemed and award-winning Colleen Atwood (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) the costumes in and of themselves make this movie such a spectacular visual treat! Each garment is individually tailored to reflect each character: from the spooky white-clad hooded twins, to the steampunk sensibilities of Emma’s lead shoes, to Olive’s thick gloves and floral frock. Historically influenced, they’ve got an eerie Victorian-esque look to them and are both practical and fascinatingly stylish.

Fiona (Georgia Pemberton)  has a serious green thumb

The atmosphere and set design really works wonders to bring this fanciful world to life. Miss Peregrine’s grand estate is impressive and imposing without encroaching on the stereotypical English boarding school academy, or the old fashioned haunted mansions from bygone eras. Outside there’s a vegetable patch, and a garden full of topiary animals (a cheeky nod to Edward Scissorhands, perhaps?). Inside, the sprawling hallways, bedrooms, and parlors are decked out with  antiquated 1920’s furniture and decor. A pitch-perfect score of jazzy and ragtime music in the background punctuates some of the most exciting and enchanting moments. The “Run Rabbit” song that blares out while we watch the sequence of bombs falling and exploding above like a fireworks show, as Miss Peregrine uses her time-turning abilities to rewind the moment, is an example of the harmony of sound and sight, and is visual effects done right!

Ultimately, the ending of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children  is a little uneven. In stark contrast from the solemn and macabre tone set earlier on, it seems comical and goofy. For a movie that has been taking itself so seriously, the ending seemed to be childish and rushed. It’s almost as though the show runners realized, “Dang this movie is dark!!” and suddenly decided that it was time to cue up some laughs and lighten things up. For a movie that featured ravenous Hollows slurping down bowls of eyeballs plucked clean out of the faces of Peculiar children in not just one, but TWO scenes-- a brigade of slap happy skeletons charging out around a British carnival pier is gonna quirk more than a few eyebrows, and be more than a little puzzling and WTF.

Especially once the kids start pelting the Hollows with snowballs. It’s slapstick and feels like it belongs to a different movie, a PG version of the movie. Darn it, Tim Burton, I didn’t want PG! I want the spine-tingling horror we had before! Crank up the creepiness!

In the end, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is steeped in the supernatural. Helmed by a fascinating fellowship of characters, and enhanced with set, costume and visual effects designs beyond the mundane everyday this is a highly watchable, fantasy-fueled and entirely captivating way to spend two hours.

Final verdict: I’ve watched this movie both in theatres and then again on DVD many months later. I can see myself enjoying this for a third, and maybe even fourth time. And actually plan on (wait for it) BUYING, yes, buying, this. There’s a sense of timelessness to the this film and the escapist fantasy aspect means this is bound to become a staple on cable television (can anyone say: Free Form!) and a new classic. Will it have a sequel? As of now it’s hard to tell. Tim Burton’s heavy-handed adaptations to the characters from the novel source material means that if there is a Hollow City movie on the way it’s going to be leaps and bounds different than Ransom Rigg’s world. It’s weirdness however, will remain!

Have gardening tools WILL fight. Take that, Hollows!

All images from IMDB