Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

Very well executed

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

I wanted to but couldn't!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The young cast do themselves proud. The story moves along at an appropriate pace with a number of nice twists and turns to keep all viewers happy. Impressive movie all in all.

Well... 8 star for concept, 1 more for the Headmistress actor and... minus 6 for all the crap which've put in the movie. Honestly base on this concept they could have done a much more successful series like pirates of the caribbean.

It's safe to say I'm not the biggest Tim Burton fan, I find that his imagination takes over and detracts from a story. I was worried he would do the same here. Guess what? He did. A young teenager finds his grandfather dead, his last riddling words spark Jake into unraveling the mystery to his sudden death. He eventually discovers an alternate time loop that consists of children with special powers known as 'Peculiars'. We're talking invisibility, levitation, pyro-kinetics, a boy spewing bees from his mouth and a young girl with another mouth on the back of her head. Suffice to say, this was Burton's interpretation of the X-Men. Some of these peculiarities are useful and thoroughly explored, others are just shown once. On top of this we have 'Hollows', demented creatures that desire to eat the eyes of 'Peculiars' so that they can return to human form. Hmmmm how best to describe these ghastly creatures you might ask? Easy. Slender Man! Imagination aside, Burton has crafted yet another creative world. There is no doubt he is a genius when it comes to creating fantasy realms. The problem is, he doesn't focus on developing a coherent and compelling story. Guarantee atleast 90% of the dialogue is exposition. Explaining the vast amount of rules involving time loops, alternate realities, peculiarities and the primary antagonist...it's too much! It's overstuffed. It's important to include scenes where the characters just interact naturally without having to progress the story so that we can relate to them and become emotionally invested. It started off well, and then quickly descended into explanation hell. Apart from that massive issue, this film works as a family fantasy adventure. The visual effects were pretty decent for the most part, except the 'Hollows' who were terribly animated. Performances were serviceable. Asa Butterfield struggles occasionally to act with expression, but he does hold the film. Eva Green looked the part and was the only captivating performance. Not Burton's finest, but it is watchable.

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.