“Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is an imaginative adventure into a world unlike any you’ve ever seen before. It features the “peculiar” children, who are gifted in unusual ways, which includes a girl who can fly and needs lead shoes to stay earthbound. In addition, there is an invisible boy, another boy who attracts bees that live inside him, and a girl who contains fire in her hands. Jake (Asa Butterfield) discovers a “loop” world, and he winds up there. He’s transported back to 1943, to the children who were friends with his grandfather, Abe (Terrence Stamp). They become his friends, too, and he is especially attracted to a young girl named Emma (Ella Purnell).

The movie features skeletons coming to life to battle bad guys and a creature with fangs (Samuel L. Jackson). It also focuses on Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), who has the power to turn into a bird and looks after the peculiar children. Jake learns that he can see monsters that ordinary people cannot see, creatures that like pulling the eyeballs out of people’s sockets and eating them. The film includes a few graphic moments of violence, including two puppet dolls that look like babies, fighting each other. One of them ends the fight by knifing the other one. Also, a young man states they did this with humans once at his parents’ funeral home. Although the film features a few positive themes, such as following one’s own heart and loyalty to friends, as well as the special relationship between Jake and his grandfather, it also contains strong language and violence, so we are prevented from awarding it our Dove “Family-Approved” Seal.