Sixteen-year-old Floridian Jake (Asa Butterfield) has a close relationship with his paternal grandfather, Abe (Terence Stamp), who raised the boy on tall tales about his childhood in a strange orphanage and subsequent adventures. It’s understandable, then, when Jake has trouble processing his granddad’s death, particularly given that he witnesses Abe’s end at the hands of a horrific monster. For the sake of closure, Jake and his father (Chris O’Dowd) travel to the orphanage in Wales that Abe once called home, only to discover it a ruin.
Shortly after arriving, however, Jake encounters a blonde waif named Emma (Ella Purnell), who leads him into a time loop in which the orphanage and its super-powered residents (“peculiars”) are quite intact, preserved forever in a repeating autumn day in 1943. Overseeing this temporal refuge is Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), a chipper, no-nonsense headmistress with her own unusual abilities. Needless to say, Jake’s arrival heralds the circling of dark forces, led by malefic shapeshifter Barron (Samuel L. Jackson).
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Adapted from Ransom Riggs’ debut novel of the same name, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children feels like a good fit for director Tim Burton, what with its eccentric outsiders, Gothic flourishes, and tone of a bedtime story-turned-nightmare. Jane Goldman’s screenplay, however, takes far too long to arrange the story’s components, yet manages to rush confusingly through vital exposition. The plot is mostly a catalog of ho-hum genre triteness, complete with a love interest and a climactic super-powered battle. Still, there are bits that work, particular a Green’s performance and the splendid mid-century American and British production design by Gavin Bocquet. Burton’s direction is polished but often drowsy; Miss Peregrine is most memorable in those moments when he permits jaw-dropping Mars Attacks!-style absurdity to rampage through the film.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children opens Friday, September 30.
