The trailer looked interesting and I figured I’d check it out when it got to the discount theater. So I finally watched Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children yesterday.
It wasn’t a bad story, the cast was good, and the visuals were great. I was disappointed that Burton beat the “fathers are worthless” dead horse again.
But the time travel angle mostly left me confused. I’ll admit I hadn’t realized it was a time travel story (the trailers minimized this). And while the rules of time loops were explained in the movie I missed it.
The time loop runs 24 hours at a set place at a set day that never changes. The bird resets it every day. The people of the loop live in that world, as the children of the school could go into town or leave the loop in 1943.
However, there is also an entrance/exit into the regular world, where time marches on.
So yeah, theoretically as mentioned you could go from 2017 to their loop, walk out in 1943, travel to a different loop that existed at that point (regular world) but for a much earlier day (loop time), exit at that date, ever moving backwards in time.
The thing is that they age frightfully if they spend time outside the loops if they’ve spent long periods in them, so even if they go backwards in time, would they still age trying to move between the loops? Well, that travel between them would get slower, more difficult and a lot more dangerous as you move backwards through history.
The people in the loops were aware of the passage of time; they didn’t just keep repeating the same day over and over mentally. So the effect of the time loop was just physical? Did that mean that anything that happened physically would get reset when the loop was reset? So for example if you burn down a building, would it reappear when the loop reset?
We saw the people leave the loop; did they age when they did it? Or was there a period of time they could stay outside of a loop before they began aging?
What was the deal with the Hollow that Miss Peregrine killed? Was it inside the loop at the start of the day or did it enter the loop? Why wasn’t it aware that it was repeating its actions each day?
Well done film, a bit too creepy for my tastes, they could have left out the pipe, and the time travel bit was confusing. Not the loop part, but the rest of it.
I noticed how after they introduced her character, the pipe pretty much disappeared.
I get annoyed with any movie that introduces something like time travel or magic and explains how it’s supposed to work - and then ignores its own set of rules.
Even so, Burton has used it in a number of his other movies. He may have chosen this book in part because of it.
I liked the pipe. I couldn’t follow the time travel but I was fine with that. The re-animator kid was creepy especially when he revives the dead child. That was really awful, especially when the dead child cries because he realises that he is dead. Ms Peregrines hugs him after he lapses back into death, and the tears are still fresh on his face. I found that really heart-breaking and chilling.
I agree re the Medusa options.
But I generally liked the film.
I assume these boys who play the leads (this movie, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”) look like Burton as a kid.
Coincidentally, I watched it a few days ago, too. I don’t remember hearing about it when it came out but I figured it’d be a sort of Harry Potter clone and that my daughters would enjoy it. Except that…
It was creepy, indeed. Way creepier than I expected.
That was the first scene that made me think it might be a bit too much for my daughters, especially:
the way way the child sits up with a jolt, his head hanging to one side like a puppet. And the empty eye sockets of course…
But then, the scene with…
the failed experiment that creates the Hollowgasts.
… was even more intense. All in all, some rather disturbing scenes.