I am to the point where I almost dread the announcement of another mainstream, big-budget studio-produced Tim Burton film. It is not that they are all bad; in fact, he has produced some of his best efforts while working beneath a major studio’s well-financed umbrella, including his uniquely warped take on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), produced for Warner Bros., and his absolutely wonderful gothic stop-motion fable Frankenweenie (2012), produced for Disney. But, for every one of those big-budget successes, in which Burton is able to maintain enough vestiges of his unique, twisted sensibility that it feels like no one else on Earth could have made it, there are homogenized duds like Planet of the Apes (2001) and Dark Shadows (2013), in which he doesn’t try hard enough (the former) or tries too hard (the latter). Burton’s best work has always been lower budgeted projects made primarily on his own terms—the wickedly funny Beetlejuice (1986), the sweetly romantic Edward Scissorhands (1990), the darkly nostalgic Ed Wood (1994). Those types of Burton films—the ones that have emotional depth that matches their extraordinary visual sensibilities—have been largely absent from his work in recent years, which is what makes the announcement of yet another enormous, CGI-heavy Burton-directed would-be blockbuster that much more disappointing.

And that’s probably a bad attitude to take into a film, but I confess it is the one that went with me to Burton’s adaptation of Ransom Riggs’s novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a project that is so obviously Burton-esque on its surface that it seems almost a cliché that he actually made it. The irony is that the final product doesn’t feel particularly Burton-esque except in its obvious delight in oddness, peculiarity, and outsiders; otherwise, it could have been made by any competent filmmaker with at least some proclivity for the bizarre and wacky. Burton certainly relishes some of the story’s more outlandish touches, and he plays up the horror aspects quite nicely. But, the film ultimately lacks a strong emotional core that would draw us into the characters and make us truly feel for their plight. There is a lot of plotting, but not much in the way of emotional texture, which means that the images rule the day, for better or for worse.

The film opens with an amusing homage to the pastel sameness of the neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands. The setting is a generic town in Florida, where all the buildings are painted a solid, monolithic color. We are introduced to Jake (Asa Butterfield, Hugo), a sensitive teenager who has grown up listening to wild adventure stories told by his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp), who appears to be growing senile. Abe’s spun tall tales about his childhood spent in a mysterious house for children with special abilities, and he and Jake spent hours mapping particular locations around the world that Jake could someday visit as an explorer. As he grew older, Jake stopped believing this grandfather’s stories, but an incident that results in Abe’s death suggests to him that maybe they weren’t just fanciful yarns after all.

Encouraged by a therapist (Allison Janney), Jake convinces his emotionally absent father (a strangely cast Chris O’Dowd, struggling to maintain a consistent southern accent) to travel with him to the Welsh island of Cairnholm where Abe supposedly spent his childhood. There, Jake discovers the house for peculiar children run by Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), who keeps them in an endless time loop where every day is September 3, 1943, which keeps them protected from an outside world that would fear and reject them. Among the peculiar children are two little ones who must keep their faces covered lest their Medusa-like stare turn others in stone, a small girl with ringlets and a cavernous, teeth-filled mouth on the back of her neck, an invisible boy, and Emma Bloom (Ella Purnell), a pretty teen who must wear weighted boots to keep her from floating away and is able to control air. Jake feels an immediate affinity for the motley group, and there are suggestions that he, like Abe, is “peculiar,” too, especially when he gets involved in helping Miss Peregrine and the kids fend off the dastardly Mr. Barron (Samuel L. Jackson), who leads a group of monsters known as Hollogasts (or “Hollows”).

All the ingredients are there, but there is a sense of impersonality to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children that keeps it from coming together. Burton marshals some memorable setpieces, including Emma and Jake taking refuge in a sunken cargo ship that she empties of water with her breath and a gross-funny sequence in which we see how the Hollogasts must eat the eyes of peculiar children in order to maintain human form (it’s probably the funniest sick-joke banquet scene since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). But, even with those bright spots, the film as a whole never really engages, which leaves the various relationships, including the budding romance between Jake and Emma and the tenuous connection between Jake and his father, vulnerable to getting overwhelmed by all the digital bombast. Let’s hope that Burton’s next project is of smaller scale and more personal value.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

All images copyright © 20th Century Fox