Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

Written by Per Gunnar Jonsson on February 25, 2018

Before I start I should perhaps mention that, although I consider this a family movie, it is perhaps a bit on the scary side for the youngest member of the family. Anyway, personally I liked the movie and so did my kids.

It did have time travel in it which I, in general, utterly dislike but it is a Tim Burton movie so it was already a foregone conclusion that it would be a wee bit bizarre anyway and it had Eva Green, which is one of my favorites, in it so that kind of made up for the time travel crap.

The movie starts of by Jacob watching his grandfather being murdered by some mysterious being that only he can see. Of course everyone believes that he was hallucinating and so off we go with hospitals and shrinks and so on. Finally his parents allow him to travel to the island of Cairnholm in search of the mysterious Miss Peregrine.

From their on we wander into the wonderful world of “Burtonesque” bizarreness, fantasy and general weirdness. Naturally Jacob meets Miss Peregrine and her kids. Kids who each have some peculiar talent each more weird than the other.

Naturally there are a some bad guys lurking in the shadows as well. Bad guys intent on destroying Miss Peregrine’s shelter and … well, let us just say that they are not exactly concerned for the children’s wellbeing. I liked the bad guys. Both in their half human form and their more scary monster form. I especially liked Samuel L. Jackson as Barron, the boss bad guy. He really made an excellent performance.

The one person I did not like was Jacob’s father. Apart from being a jerk he looked like he was on drugs or sleeping pills throughout the entire movie.

On the whole this was perhaps not the best of Tim Burtons movies but it was still a good and enjoyable one. Decent special effects. The story worked despite the enormous paradoxes introduced by the time travel stuff. The characters did a fair performance. I did not regret the 2+ hours I spent on watching it.