Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

[OldCorpse]

There's a curiously divided opinion among my filmmaking friends about this film - love or hate. I'm sad to say, I finally saw it, and unfortunately for me, it's "I hate it". I thought the acting was pretty poor throughout, especially the lead who I thought was just unbelievably bad (Asa Butterfield), and the effects nothing we haven't seen before. The story didn't engage me, and the whole thing felt tired. By far the worst aspect of it was the direction. The elemental choices were all terrible - from actors to music, to editing choices. Pacing was horrendous - over two hours long that felt like six hours with content you could squeeze into 30 - long feeling - minutes. It was a structural disaster with overly long and unengaging setup and prolonged multiple end points where it kept looking like it should end, but kept zombie walking on. It really was a long series of set pieces which were unexciting on their own, and disconnected from each other and any larger purpose existing only for the moment without any overarching purpose to drive the narrative. As a result, the first hour felt like there was literally zero narrative drive. It feels like Tim Burton has gotten very, very old. He's lost his timing - or more generally he's lost it altogether. It's not a case of a "bad" movie - it's an illustration of a product of brain damage. Not a film, but footage. Tragic melange of footage that's barely organized.