Legendary director and producer Tim Burton has once again captured our hearts and let us embrace our own quirkiness with adventure Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
The film tells the tale of Jake, a seemingly ordinary boy whose grandfather told him tales, of hollows and children with peculiar gifts who all lived in a house in Wales.
After the death of his grandfather, Jake finds out that these tales are more than simple stories and are in fact a reality. With eye-eating monsters, a boy who has a nest of bees in his body, and fighting skeletons it is easy to see why so many people have flocked to see this escapist film.
The star studded cast includes Samuel L Jackson, Judi Dench and eerie Eva Green who plays the strict but intelligent Miss Peregrin.
Who doesn’t love a character who smokes a pipe and can also turn into a falcon as well. Eva spoke of Burton highly saying that it was “a film that lets you embrace your strangeness.”
The film holds the dark humoured side of Burton’s creations such as “The Corpse’s Bride, Sweeney Todd and Edward Scissor Hands. It was abstract for Burton to not use his usual formula for cast member’s and have the likes of Helena Bonham Carter, Jonny Depp and Sacha Baron Cohen.
The new faces of Ella Purnell who plays Emma, a girl who can float and has to wear steel boots otherwise she will ascend to no man’s land and Asa Butterfield, the protagonist who plays Jake bring adolescent charm to the film with an endearing yet slow moving relationship.
After watching the film and being drawn to its almost familiar feel of home (as aren’t we all a little peculiar) I went away and read the 2011 book by Ramson Riggs. My personal favourite part of the movie is watching two twins who can turn people to stone by looking at them, arguing over a teddy bear which Miss Peregrine rips in two as twins don’t have to share everything, do they?
In contrast the film seems slightly more graphic and maybe the age rating should have been higher than 12 seeing as though we watch eyes getting eaten and a dead boy talking with his eye sockets empty.
I sincerely hope that we see more of the Peregrin group and hopefully this will bloom into a franchise that people will watch for decades to come especially as the film has topped the foreign box office in its first week of being released. This is a must-see Burton extravaganza.