If you are fan of visionary director Tim Burton, chances are you know mostly for his distinct visual style, a style he's possessed since his signature debut in the comedy-horror 'Beetlejuice' in 1988. Burton has embraced a Gothic visual modus and macabre atmosphere that has most often made his films more of visual spectacles than films with compelling storytelling. This dark fantasy inspired by Ransom Riggs's best-selling novel series of the same name sees Burton continuing his signature trend with his dazzling visual methodology that manages to outplay it's occasionally clunky script. Written by Jane Goldman, frequent collaborator of director Matthew Vaughn, this film translates it's compelling source material with fine, but occasionally sluggish style-over-substance flick that only succeeds on embracing Burton's typical visual grandeur than coherent storytelling. Enter sixteen-year old Jake (played by Asa Butterfield), a young teen inspired by the extraordinary adventures of his grandfather Abe Portman (played by Terence Stamp) to seek out a mysterious foster family raised by the witch-like Miss Peregrine (played by Eva Green). The family consisted of children gifted with utterly bizarre abilities including a child who can manipulate air and breath underwater, another with an invisible body, one with a monstrous mouth at the back of her head, another with the ability to light things on fire with her bare hands, the list goes in. As the young man is drawn into their unnatural world, he learns the secrets of their family that put their lives in grave danger against mysterious monsters that pray on them.
With Tim Burton operating behind the camera, it is predictable that this strives for bizarre and spooky imagery that immediately hits you with reminiscence of Burton's previous works. The world of the titular character's mysterious habitat is drawn with an authentic 1940s-era production design and spooky imagery of characters with creepy CGI anatomical abnormalities and corpses with eyes hollowed out; just enough bizarre scenery to give elementary-school aged kids to the heebie jeebies. The make-up done on Eva Green's Miss Peregrine to give her a Maleficient-like appearance is pretty nice to look at as well. How Tim Burton's visual heft manages to tower over the storytelling however, comes as the film's prime disappointment. The first hour follows a 'X-Men meets Harry Potter' plot introducing a series of uncanny characters through long, convoluted exposition. In the process, the characters then introduce a time looping element that is should have made the plot more interesting but only adds more needless confusion to the already mind-boggling plot, and it's not until the roughly the hour and a half mark when the story begins to make reasonable sense. At that point, we are granted with our heroes engaging climatic showdown against creepy Slenderman-like creatures followed by a fight against devilish, glowy-eyed Samuel L. Jackson (an odd casting choice) filled with slick special effects and CGI. By the end, it fairly makes up for the sluggish narrative as does the performances. Asa Butterfield does a fine job as the protagonist but it's only disappointing that his character falls short of interest. In the midst of the crowded cast however, Eva Green is easily the standout in the performance department, giving a profound portrayal as the titular supporting entity.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a slick dark fantasy spectacle that is gracefully held up by Tim Burton's signature visual appeal above Jane Goldman's blemished screenplay. In fair words, Tim Burton's effort on rendering Ransom Riggs's popular source material come to somewhat satisfying results, even if it falls deep under the flairs of Burton's magnums opuses.
