Prepare For Life to Get a Little More Peculiar
Hello fellow readers and movie-watchers! Today, in honour of me finally getting around to see Tim Burton’s new film adaptation of Ransom Riggs’s bestselling novel Ms Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, I figured it was a great thing to review. So, here goes nothing…
Riggs’s Ms Peregrine’s trilogy was good. Not great, not awful, just…good. It was an interesting read. One thing that I did not expect was its darkness. The book was not gruesome, nor particularly scary, it was just weird. Twisted. Dark. And not really because of the words, of the descriptions…they definitely lent the story some darkness, but it was the photographs imbedded between the pages of words that really made it creepy.
Why? My best guess is because it’s like that old saying, “pictures or it didn’t happen.” With pictures, it makes it seem like it actually did happen. Like the events in the story could be happening right now, in the real world. That in itself made the story seem that much more frightening.
However, that’s not to say that the pictures were a bad thing. For me, I thought that they were actually genius. Not only did it improve emotional appeal and make the book even scarier, as I said in the last paragraph, but it also gave a nice break from reading words after words on page after page.
Then, after I’d finished Hollow City, book two in the trilogy, my friend informed me that there would be a Ms Peregrine’s movie coming out in the upcoming months. Of course, I was thrilled. A little frightened of how twisted this movie would be, especially considering not just the book’s dark themes but also Tim Burton’s reputation for creating creepy, almost horrific movies, but excited nevertheless.
Then…I saw the first trailer.
And it ruined things for me.
Sure, the cast looked great. Sure, the special effects looked great. Sure, the movie itself as a whole even looked great. But…they changed possibly the most major thing they could have.
Emma, the love interest/female lead from the novels, was given air powers as opposed to fire powers.
Now, not only would that change the entire storyline, as she and her fire were both major problems and solutions throughout the series, but Emma was one of my favourite characters in the books. With her fire, she was badass. And then the film producers went off and gave her possibly the weakest, most meek elemental power they could have given her…wind. Air.
Needless to say, I went into the movie with pretty low expectations. But, just as the trailer had shocked me for the worse, the movie shocked me for the better.
Yes, they ruined Emma’s badass-ness. But she was still likeable. Yes, they changed a lot from the book. Including the ending. Especially the ending. (We’ll come back to that later). But I actually liked it more than I expected to.
One of the things that I loved was the soundtrack. To me, one of the things that makes a good movie is its music (think: Pirates of the Caribbean, Now You See Me, Star Wars…all the best movies have great soundtracks).
In Ms Peregrine’s, the soundtrack wasn’t very distinguishable for most of the film, however, in one final fight scene at the end, they used an upbeat song which I thought added humour. That was really important to me as it cut the fright of the Tim Burton production and made it fun, transforming it from a purely horror film to a mix of action, adventure, horror and comedy, making Ms Peregrine’s complex and interesting.
Then, of course, was the ending. This, I have mixed feelings about. I’m not sure whether I loved it or hated it.
On the bright side: happy ending! Everything was resolved. All my ships sailed (literally and figuratively) :D
On the dark side: Everything about the ending was different than the book’s conclusion. Plus, Riggs’s series is a trilogy. However, the ending of Burton’s film literally wrapped everything up, and I cannot see how it would be possible to make this franchise more than just one standalone film.
So, from the positives to the negatives, the awful shockers to the good surprises, I have mixed feelings about the Ms Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
Is it worth the read? Not if you are afraid of darkness and twisted horror. But it’s different…peculiar, I guess, in its own right…and so I found it an interesting read. Not particularly great, but not horrible, either. So it’s up to you.
As for the film, is it worth the see? Yes, I do think so. It may have had terrifying scenes that us human viewers really need not see, but it was artfully complex, which takes a mastermind such as Tim Burton to pull off. It was interesting, twisted, and dark; but there were aspects of love and humour throughout as well. And for that creativity, I say yes, it was very well put together and definitely worth the see.
Rate: 7.1/10
(6.2/10 for the books)
(8.0/10 for the movie)
