IN childhood, Abe Portman (Terence Stamp) escaped from Poland. In old age he lives in the US, where his teenaged grandson Jake (Asa Butterfield) discovers family material that sends him to an island off the English coast to find the school where Abe went to avoid the blitz.

The building is now a ruin left by a German bomb in September 1943.

The plot for this fantasy film, directed by Tim Burton, comes from a “young adult” novel by Ransom Riggs and adapted by Jane Goldman. The lower age range of its target audience is probably puberty, which its “M” classification makes access to it something of a problem for under-16s.

The principal characters are the children at the school when the bomb hit and their teacher Miss Alma LeFay Peregrine (Eva Green) who each afternoon at the precise time the bomb fell turns back the clock by 24 hours thereby saving the occupants. Yes, it’s a pleasantly flavoured, time-travel story in which Jake and Emma (Ella Purnell) form a friendship, somewhat complicated by Emma’s need to wear lead boots that keep her otherwise-weightless body from blowing away.

Just off the island lies a sunken ship, in the saloon of which is the box of Jake’s family memorabilia that Emma and Jake carry to the surface. From that point, the story delivers fantasy mixed with excitement, dread and charm along changing threads of time and place, agreeable enough without making unmanageable demands on credibility.

At all cinemas