Film

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Name: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
Released: 2016
Cast: Eva Green, Asa Butterfield, Samuel L. Jackson, Judi Dench, Rupert Everett

Tim Burton's visual fever dream about a boy who discovers a time-looped island of gifted orphans. It's a gorgeous, frequently strange adventure that values eccentricity and oddness above sense-making. For people who loved the book, or who want their fantasy weird enough to feel genuinely surprising.

TMDb rating

3.4

If you liked this

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them2016

Shares Burton's taste for whimsical production design and creatures that feel genuinely alien. A wizard protagonist navigating a hidden magical world with similar visual inventiveness and a slightly off-kilter sense of humour.

But The plot is messier and less focused than the Harry Potter films it spins off from, and it takes time to settle into its own identity.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them poster

The NeverEnding Story1984

A young person thrust into a strange magical realm where peculiar creatures exist and the stakes involve protecting that world from destruction. Same sense of childhood wonder meeting genuine threat, with practical effects that still feel alive.

But It's slower-paced and more introspective than modern blockbusters. The aesthetics are very 1980s, which works beautifully or looks dated depending on your tolerance.

Coraline2009

Stop-motion fantasy with the same dark, Burtonesque sensibility. A girl discovers a parallel world of impossible people, gorgeous design, and creeping dread. Neil Gaiman's imaginative strangeness translated perfectly to screen.

But It's deliberately unsettling in places—designed to unsettle children—so it's darker and more genuinely eerie than Miss Peregrine.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Amélie2001

Both celebrate weirdness and outsiders with genuine tenderness rather than irony. Both insist that the strange people are the interesting ones.

A French fairy tale told in whimsy rather than spectacle. Amélie's Paris is just as enchanted and colour-coded as Burton's island; characters are wonderful rather than normal; kindness and oddness are the point. Same belief that gentle strangeness is the truest magic.

But It's slower, more internal, and European in its pacing. If you came for monsters and action, you'll find a film content to linger on a smile for two minutes.

Crimson Peak2015

Guillermo del Toro's love letter to Gothic mystery, with lush production design and a supernatural mystery that values atmosphere over explanation. A heroine discovering a strange household full of secrets and impossibilities.

But It prioritises mood and beauty over plot momentum. If you want things explained clearly and quickly, you'll find it frustratingly slow.

A Monster Calls2016

A boy dealing with loss encounters something impossible in his garden. Blends reality and fantasy gracefully, with genuine emotional weight beneath the magical elements. Released the same year, with similar sensitivity to how adolescents process the strange world.

But It's quieter and more melancholic than Miss Peregrine. The fantasy elements are sparse and serve the emotional story rather than driving spectacle.

The Secret of Kells2009

Hand-animated Irish fantasy with visual style that's genuinely peculiar and stunning. A boy in a magical world surrounded by creatures and mythology, with a mysteries to uncover and a larger conflict brewing.

But It's animated rather than live-action, and the mythology-heavy story can be hard to follow without prior knowledge of Celtic legend.

Twisters2024

A group of misfits banding together in extraordinary circumstances, with genuine chemistry and visual spectacle. The cast dynamic echoes the found-family feeling of Miss Peregrine's orphans.

But It's much more grounded in real-world action and disaster, so you're trading weirdness and fantasy for weather science and American landscapes.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief2010

A teenager discovering he's part of a hidden mythological world, trained by eccentric mentors in a special school. Similar coming-of-age-in-a-strange-place energy with monsters and quests.

But The film adaptation simplifies Rick Riordan's books considerably and feels uneven in tone, veering between humour and attempted gravitas.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief poster

Over the Garden Wall2014

Both explore children thrust into magical worlds where the rules are different and danger is real. Both use visual beauty to make the uncanny feel seductive.

A miniseries (nine episodes, ninety minutes total) about two brothers lost in an impossible forest. Darkly beautiful, genuinely unsettling, with the same balance of childhood adventure and creeping dread. Every frame is painterly.

But It's slow and contemplative rather than plot-driven. The mood is melancholic and occasionally bleak—beautiful but not comforting.

The Shape of Water2017

Both directors (Burton and del Toro) share a sensibility: the belief that beauty and strangeness belong together, and that creatures everyone else fears deserve love and protection.

Guillermo del Toro's love story between a mute woman and an amphibian creature. Lush, strange, gorgeously designed, and genuinely moving. Takes its oddness completely seriously while remaining tender.

But It's a romance and a Cold War thriller rather than an adventure—quite different in register. The premise sounds absurd until you're completely invested in the relationship.