Movie review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Now because I tried writing a blurb and utterly failed, I just mangled the iBooks one: When Jacob's grandfather, Abe, a WWII veteran, is savagely murdered, Jacob has a nervous breakdown, in part because he believes that his grandfather was killed by a monster that only they could see. On his psychiatrist's advice, Jacob and his father travel from their home in Florida to Cairnholm Island off the coast of Wales, which, during the war, housed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Abe, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, lived there before enlisting, and the mysteries of his life and death lead Jacob back to that institution. 

It's basically like X-Men with teenagers in Wales. (In other words, the book was utterly amazing.)

Source

So I've been a fan of the books for a couple of years now, and I was beyond excited for the movie to come out. The book has a very particular, uh, peculiar, tone, and the thought of seeing that on the big screen had me jumping up and down (quite literally, to my family's confusion and annoyance). 

The first three quarters stayed mostly true to the book, which I was thrilled about. (It always seems to me that the moment they stray is the moment they lose the plot (more on that later)). Jacob's character was done quite well and I had no problem merging my Book Jacob into the Movie Jacob (you know what I'm talking about if you've ever read a book then watched the movie), and I absolutely loved every scene in Wales because the atmosphere was just perfect. 

That being said, I had a lot of problems with this movie. Like, a lot a lot, Miss Peregrine being one of them. There were moments when she was absolutely perfect, then there would be another moment when she completely threw me. (Kinda like the tone. Sometimes the tone was perfect, then sometimes something felt just... off.) The romance (which was great in the book, by the way) fell flat on its face and the only emotion I felt during the entire movie was a slight twinge of apprehension. There were moments when I felt like turning to my sister and going "oh, so this was definitely directed by Tim Burton," then rolling my eyes. I suppose that's always been one of my problems with Tim Burton movies; there are moments when I feel completely alienated from his films. Perhaps that's just me, though. 

The climax was completely different from the book, where they [spoiler] because [spoiler] so they could [spoiler]. That in itself I didn't mind, because they ended up wrapping up the trilogy in the one movie (a good move, in my opinion). The transition from the source material to the added climax was done smoothly and if you hadn't have read the book you would have never known that there was a whole new part to the movie. However, once again there was a scene that was just too weird, even for a movie with the word "peculiar" in the title and my suspension of disbelief went through a rough patch. 

I'm still indecisive about how I feel about the movie. On one hand, they did a great job of keeping to the book and I appreciate that. Jacob's character was translated very well, and the atmosphere of Wales and the home for the peculiar children was spot on. It was just the lack of emotion and those moments that made me step back and ask what was going on that made me walk away without a smile on my face. 

P.S. I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year, so I'll probably be behind on everything blog related. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just... well... ignoring you to finish my book. Thanks for understanding!

Have you seen the movie or read the book (or both)? What did you think?