First of all, I really enjoyed the book. It is one of the best pieces of fantasy I have read in quite some time, and that truly means something given that I've come to realize due to my job as a bookseller that the genre of fantasy is overall pretty uncreative. There's a good guy, there's a bad guy, the good guy fights the bad guy and gets the girl, you know, because he's the good guy. Genders may vary, even though usually still heteronormative.
Compared to that, Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs was a refreshing bliss. Yes, there are still the good guys and the bad guys. And the main good guy (called protagonist by some people) gets the girl. But the overall idea is fairly innovative.
The good guys are the Peculiars. Peculiars are people with special abilities like being free from gravity or being invisible or being able to manipulate time. The latter are called ymbrynes, and they're always women and also able to transform into birds, which is pretty neat. The ymbrynes have taken the task to look after young peculiars and keep them save in time loops.
The bad guys are the Hollows and Wights. Hollows are corrupted peculiars who wanted to use the ymbrynes to make themselves immortal but like everything, immortality comes with a price and thus now they are deformed monsters who are invisible to most people (and Peculiars). In order to gain a human form again, they have to eat Peculiars. Then, they become Wights, basically human, but easily recognizable by their eyes which are completely white.
When he was younger, the protagonist Jake heard about the peculiars in stories his grandfather told him. When Jake grew up, he started to believe that none of that would be true and propably a metaphor for his grandfathers life back in World War II, being a jewish refugee from Poland saved by Miss Peregrine and her home for children.
When his grandfather dies under mysterious circumstances he gives Jake a few strange clues. No one believes in what Jake saw that night, everyone thinks he is traumatized by what happened and very fragile. Yet, he manages to convince his parents to go visit Cairnholm, the tiny island in Wales where Miss Peregrines Home for Children is located. There, he gets into the time loop Miss Peregrine made for September 3rd 1940, the day Wales got bombed, and meets all the people he thought were fairy tale characters, and his life changes forever - because he can see the hollows.
Ransom Riggs wrote his story around old photos he started collecting as a hobby, odd pictures of people long dead. All the photos and handwritten letters and drawings that illustrate the book make it a masterpiece and I recommend that everyone who is interested in history and likes to read slightly scary fantasy novels - please, please go read it!
So much for the book (yes, this is where things are going south).
When I finished the book, I went to see the movie. Since I read a movie-tie-in version (don't judge me, that was the one available right away), I already noticed from the movie pictures in the back that there were quite a few changes: Characters switched whole roles (two of them only kept their names but switched powers and personality), characters were made younger, and Eva Green looked quite different than the Miss Peregrine described in the books. Yet, I thought I'd give it a chance since I don't mind minor changes from the book too much.
I feel like the story was rushed very much in the movie. The book takes a lot of time for Jake to try and figure out wether or not what he's seen is real or imagination, and given that he IS in fact traumatized (of course he is) I would have wished for a bit more mental health care for him in the movie as well since dealing with trauma is an important topic of the book and for actual real life people who might be in the audience. Another thing that was rushed was Jakes relationship with Emma (a pyrokinese girl in the book, a airbending girl in the movie). The book took a lot of time for this relationship to grow naturally, Emma being sceptical at first of Jake, Jake being reluctant to date a girl who used to date his grandfather (remember, we're in a time loop), both being shy around each other and so on. That was something I really enjoyed while reading. In the movie, no one is sceptical, and basically, they kiss because they are a girl and a boy so they naturally have to (insert looooong moan here). The characters in general seem very much set in their personalities and thus, the movie is lacking some serious character developement. Dear hollywood, this is the fun part of a story!
Overall, everything seems a little over the top, especially Miss Peregrine who talks like a puppet and keeps staring at everyone like she is about to eat them.
The end was propably designed in case there was no second movie made, thus, we get an admittedly funny final fight between the Peculiars and the Wights and Hollows, yet, it seems a bit like Kevin from Home Alone dealing with the Wet Bandits: Nice booby traps, but given their enemies are supposed to be actually dangerous and deadly, I'd expected a more epic show-down.
Briefly, I'd say: The movie on it's own is okay, as a movie adaption it's a shame. Please, do yourself a favour and either read the book before seeing the movie or do not let the movie stop you from reading the book. It is actually A LOT better.
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