Tim Burton was the only choice. Honestly, looking back at the 2016 release of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, it’s hard to imagine any other director touching Ransom Riggs’ weird, photo-driven source material without making it feel like a cheap X-Men knockoff. It’s a movie about "peculiars"—kids with genetic anomalies that give them powers—but it’s also about trauma, the literal preservation of childhood, and the terrifying realization that your parents might be lying to you about how the world works.
Jake Portman, played by Asa Butterfield, is our eyes and ears. He’s a lonely Florida teenager who finds himself in Wales after his grandfather is murdered by something that shouldn't exist. He finds a time loop. He finds a headmistress who turns into a bird.
He finds a family.
But here’s the thing: the movie didn't just adapt a book. It fundamentally rewired the "Peculiar" DNA in ways that still have fans arguing on Reddit almost a decade later. Some of those changes were brilliant. Others? Well, they were a bit of a mess.
The Eva Green Effect and the Bird in the Clock
Eva Green as Alma LeFay Peregrine is probably the most perfect casting in a Burton film since Johnny Depp first put on scissors for hands. She’s sharp. She’s mechanical. She carries a crossbow like she’s born to it and checks her pocket watch with a precision that borders on obsessive-compulsive.
In the film, Miss Peregrine is an Ymbryne. These are the matriarchs of the peculiar world. They can manipulate time and take the form of birds. Green plays her with a frantic, bird-like jitteriness—head tilts, wide eyes, and a voice that sounds like velvet over gravel.
The movie focuses heavily on the 1943 time loop. It’s a 24-hour period in Cairnholm, Wales, that resets just before a German bomb levels the house. To the kids, it’s a paradise. To an outsider, it’s a gilded cage. Burton captures this contrast through saturated colors inside the loop and depressing, muted greys in the "real" world.
The Swap Everyone Hates (and Why Burton Did It)
If you’ve read the books, you know the big one. In the novel, Emma Bloom is the girl who can conjure fire with her hands. Olive is the girl who floats.
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In the movie? They switched them.
Ella Purnell’s Emma is the one wearing lead shoes to keep from drifting into the stratosphere. It was a massive pivot. Fans were livid. The reasoning, according to the production team, was that Emma’s air-based powers allowed for more "cinematic" and romantic imagery—specifically that underwater sequence where she breathes air into a sunken ship to clear it of water.
While the fire-starting would have been cool, the visual of Emma being held down by a rope while Jake walks her through a garden like a human balloon is pure Burton. It’s weird. It’s slightly uncomfortable. It’s exactly what the movie needed to stand out from the polished, CGI-heavy superhero flicks of the mid-2010s.
Samuel L. Jackson and the Hollowgast Problem
We have to talk about the villains. The Hollows.
In the lore, these are peculiars who tried to achieve immortality through a botched experiment. They became invisible monsters that eat the eyes of "live" peculiars to regain human form. Once they’ve eaten enough, they become "Wights."
Samuel L. Jackson plays Barron, a character created specifically for the film to consolidate several book antagonists. He’s chewing the scenery. He’s got white hair, no pupils, and sharp teeth. He’s terrifying, but also weirdly funny.
The creature design for the Hollowgast is where the movie really earns its PG-13 rating. They look like Slender Man’s nightmares—long, spindly limbs and multiple tongues. They are the physical manifestation of the "monster under the bed," and seeing them interact with the stop-motion style skeletons during the climax at the Blackpool pier is a direct homage to Ray Harryhausen.
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It’s a tonal shift that shouldn't work. One minute you’re watching a whimsical dinner party, and the next, you’re watching invisible monsters gobble eyeballs out of a bowl like they’re olives at a cocktail party.
Why the Ending Split the Fanbase
The film’s third act departs so radically from the first book that it basically creates its own timeline.
The novel ends on a cliffhanger. The kids are in rowboats, displaced, heading into an uncertain future. The movie decided to go for a "save the day" finale in modern-day Blackpool.
It’s a bit of a mess. Honestly, the pacing falls apart in the last twenty minutes. We go from a slow-burn gothic mystery to a frantic battle on a boardwalk. Yet, there’s something charming about the peculiar kids using their "talents" in a fight. The twins—who are basically Medusa-lite—finally reveal what’s under their masks, and it’s one of the few times the movie genuinely shocks the audience with its horror elements.
The romance between Jake and Emma also gets a more "final" resolution in the film. Because of the way time loops work, Jake has to travel through multiple loops across the globe to find his way back to 1943. It’s a bittersweet ending that highlights the sacrifice of being peculiar: you get to live forever, but you can never really go home.
The Real-World Locations You Can Actually Visit
Most people think the house was a set built in a studio in London. It wasn't.
The "home" is actually Torenhof Castle in Brasschaat, Belgium. Tim Burton chose it because it looked like a "proper house for a bunch of peculiar children." It has that specific mix of elegance and decay.
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The scenes for Cairnholm were filmed in Aberaeron and Portholland in Wales. If you visit these spots, you won't find a time loop, but the mist and the jagged cliffs are very real. The production didn't have to do much to make the Welsh coast look haunting. The environment does the heavy lifting, providing a grounded reality that balances out the floating girls and invisible monsters.
Is It a Good Adaptation?
That depends on what you want from a movie.
If you want a literal page-to-screen translation, you’ll hate it. The power swaps, the compressed timeline, and the invented villain change the soul of the story.
But if you want a "Tim Burton Movie," it’s one of his best works of the last decade. It’s better than Dark Shadows. It’s more coherent than Alice in Wonderland. It captures the "outcast" feeling that defined Burton’s early career in Edward Scissorhands.
The movie treats "peculiarity" as a metaphor for neurodivergence or simply being the kid who doesn't fit in. It doesn't try to "fix" the children. It just gives them a place where they don't have to apologize for who they are.
What You Should Do Next
If you’ve watched the movie and want to dive deeper into the world of Miss Peregrine, don't just stop at the first book.
- Read "Library of Souls": This is the third book in the series. It explains the "Panopticon" and the origin of the Ymbrynes in a way the movie never could.
- Track down the original photos: Ransom Riggs built the story around real, vintage "found" photographs. Looking at the actual photos that inspired the characters changes how you perceive them. They aren't just special effects; they were real people who looked... off.
- Watch the "Peculiar Tales" shorts: There are several animated bits and lore videos released during the 2016 marketing campaign that flesh out the history of the other loops.
- Check out the "Tales of the Peculiar" companion book: It’s styled like a book of fairy tales within the world. It provides the "historical" context for how the peculiar society was formed.
The movie is a gateway. It’s flawed, beautiful, and deeply weird. Just like the children inside the loop, it’s a bit of a misfit, but that’s exactly why it sticks with you long after the credits roll.