There is a director who loves to make “restricted” fairy tales for children. He is Tim Burton. He is said to have worked as a trainee animator at Disney, but was fired because his drawings were too dark and tended to scare children. Apparently, his temperament and style were at odds with Hollywood, where hormones and greatness fly together.
“Alice in Wonderland” has always been labeled as “ghostly” and “eccentric”, and he has played with the eerie, spooky and evil aspects of fairy tales …… to the fullest. Sometimes, some of his films cannot be introduced to the Mainland because of the subject matter and style.
“Some adults think that fairy tales are obviously made for children, so why make them so evil. Well, the “uncastrated” version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales is still very pornographic and violent.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is based on the 2012 bestselling novel The Girl in the Weird House. The novel has been described as “the coolest and scariest book” by the American press and is a perfect match for Tim Burton’s style. The book was a New York Times bestseller for 70 weeks, selling almost as many copies as The Hunger Games and The Da Vinci Code. The original author, Ransom Riggs, is said to have been inspired by some old photographs.
I’m not going to lie, when I first read this book, I got a chill down my back. There are an estimated 50 or so of these spooky photos throughout the book. This is a story about a child with superpowers. The main character, Jack, is a 16 year old rich teenager. His grandfather, the only Jew in his previous family to escape from WWII. Having been a soldier and fought in the war, the family collects a bunch of guns and carries a bizarre past. From the time Jack was a child, his grandfather used to tell stories about that past. Stories of super-powered children and demons that reeked of decay.
The family thought Grandpa was senile, but only Jack believed everything he told them. But one day, Grandpa was killed and his body was left in the wilderness. By the time Jack arrives, Grandpa’s eyes have long since been gouged out. He leaves a message for Jack: The demons are trying to kill him, go and find them. …… What are the demons? And who are they? In the darkness, Jack seemed to see the demon, with its huge body and three tentacles spitting in and out of its mouth. Jack tells the adults, but none of them believe it; they think he is as crazy as his grandfather. To find out the truth about his grandfather’s death, Jack travels to a small, backwater island. There is an orphanage, on the other side of the island, and people say it is haunted. The teachers and children who used to live there died on the most terrible day in history. Unexpectedly, Jack finds a box of spooky photos in the old house.
The pictures were exactly the same as the ones his grandfather had shown him. There’s the girl who goes up in a minute, the invisible little boy, the girl with the bloody mouth on the back of her head, the schoolmistress who controls time enough to turn into a peregrine falcon …… and, they’re all actually still alive!
Jack accidentally intrudes into their world and meets them in a ritual that takes place every night …… What’s even scarier is that in the days after his grandfather’s death, Jack always feels like there are eyes watching him in the dark, following him wherever he goes. The setting in the book was creepy enough, but I didn’t expect Tim Burton to change it even more in the film. A blood-sucking demon who chews on the eyes of small children for a living. The resurrected clay man is turned into a murderous puppet made of heart and bones …… This is probably enough to give bear children a few days of nightmares. The film has now been released in the country with average word of mouth.
The logic of such a dark fairy tale cannot be delved into. After watching it, you might think how the big villain demon is so stupid and scummy, why don’t superpowered children zoom in sooner …… a bit outside the box and a bit reasonable, maybe Burton is just trying to structure another form of heroism. Some say it’s set up as a geeky version of the X-Men, with teachers protecting and teaching children with superpowers. But apparently it’s not as friendly as X-Men, less heroic and still inheriting Burton’s darkness and treachery. With the added touches of gold-medal screenwriter Jane Goodman (Kingsman, X-Men), it’s still worth waiting for. The most anticipated aspect of the film is, of course, the goddess Eva Green.
This is not the first time she has worked with Tim Burton. The last time she played a sexy, domineering witch in the lead role of Depp in Dark Shadows. I’m sure everyone who saw her in “Paris in a Dream” was amazed by her broken arm as Venus. She also played the inferior and pretentious schoolteacher in “The Cracks”. The sometimes cautious, sometimes maniacal psychic in the British drama “Lowlife” scares even herself when she goes crazy. Her eyes are creepy and haunting. Asa Butterfield, who plays the male lead, is the wide-eyed child in “The Boy in the Pajamas”.
He has grown up to be a beautiful man with long legs. The film’s villain is Samuel L. Jackson, the director of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Of course, Jackson’s eye-rolling costume isn’t the scariest part of the film, as you’ll see later. In terms of graphics, the film is as good as “Your Name” which was released on the same day. The screenshots, which are also screen savers, are Tim Burton’s gothic fairytale world. Despite the evil spells that are defined in the adult world, an innocent and beautiful rose blooms in the heart of a child.
If you look hard enough, the “monsters” in the film are not scary at all. “Edward Scissorhands”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The Zombie Bride”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Big Fish” …… This strange old man seems to have an inexhaustible supply of strange thoughts, and the emotions inside are strange but moving. His works always seem to focus on sensitive, lonely and weird children. Each of the main characters seems to hide his own figure, which may not be understood by everyone, but hides a great potential. The film is essentially an adaptation of the first part of The Girl in the Weird House, with the later stories being played out at will by Tim Burton. The pace of the film is inevitably faster than the original, and I personally prefer the layers of chills in the original, but the timid grandma and grandpa should be careful. As for the ending of the original film, author Ransom Riggs gives the answer in “Odd House Girls 3: Museum of Souls”.
