Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

So Tim Burton has decided to make something strange and gothic without Johnny Depp? With an almost exclusively British cast, not featuring his wife? I wonder if my umbrella holds frogs and pigs at a high velocity.

Let's make it perfectly clear that I have never read the novel, so I shall base this review solely on the film itself.

In trying to explain it using other films, it's sort of "The Others" meets "Groundhog Day" when it comes to the plot, and more Benicio del Toro than Tim Burton in scenography. And let us start with the latter. I have come to expect more distinctiveness from Burton in that area. It is gothic though, and the fact that he (mostly) refrains from overdoing it, adds to the creepy feeling of. Besides, he does bring out the big guns on occasion. You will never see a cooler ghost ship.

On to the actors. The mains are mostly unknown to me, but all very good. Particularly Purnell and Butterfield excel and their chemistry is undeniable. Extra cudos to Burton for finding just the right balance to develop their relationship, and timing it aptly. There are some utterly brilliant veteran choices in the casting, in particular Terence Stamp and Allison Janney. Samuel L. Jackson is a bit hit-and-miss, whereas Rupert Everett and Judi Dench are talent completely wasted here.

The biggest problem I have with this flick, though, is the same as I had with Dark Shadows. It seems as if he has too much material with which to fill his film, and so it feels a bit erratic and coincidental at times. There are too many characters, and to use a seasoned veteran for a nothing of a part only makes the teaser trailer more interesting. Not the character itself. There are a lot of characters that scream out for some explanation as to their motivations, but alas, they do not come.

But Burton does very well with emotions. It's tense throughout, has a few good scares and is outright exciting and enthralling towards the end. He lacks a bit in the humour-department this time around, but I suppose it brings more seriousness to a film that does involve the very serious death that can occur to young children in supernatural environments. Fart-jokes might have been edited out, I suppose. And as always, Burton has a keen sense of detail, meaning that the observant viewer can pick up a little something extra. He never ceases to give us that little piece of magic we imagine we are the only ones that picked up.

And for that, I shall always remember Burton with joy. Despite "Planet of the Apes".

7/10