Heavenly Creatures

This kind of work with the image in a drama (constant driving that reveals necessary information gradually, alienating effects, point of view changes, the impossibility of relying on who actually owns the scene) is the kind of thing that Spielberg then started doing almost twenty years later (after all, he and Jackson did The Adventures of Tintin together). An enlightened handling of a tabloid subject that doesn't actually care about the murder, but rather tries to make us understand the seemingly exaggerated and naive bond between two friends at the prime of their lives, besieged by an ossified, rational, and limited world, is a thing that is still awfully rare today. A beautiful reminder of a certain time in life that I would normally describe as non-transferable, which ends with a bludgeoning with a brick. (22/06/2020)

A small film that allowed Peter to develop his filmmaking skills and extraordinary flexibility of moods and different accents like no other endeavor afterwards... in a sense, it is to me the pinnacle of the New Zealand Hobbit. The wonderful transition from the pink girl's diary to the bloody edition of adolescent psychopathology is magnificent, as are the eccentric but perfectly smooth jumps between worlds. And Kate is an enchanting psychotic single poem. (06/12/2012)

The 1950s hold promise for Peter Jackson, and it's a great pity that he couldn't experience them himself. In his films, they are captured beautifully, and the same goes for this movie set in the 1950s. That era is reflected in all of his films that aren't fantasy-related. Similarly, he is fascinated by murders, but in the filmmaking sense of the word. At least I hope that’s the case. Heavenly Creatures isn't as strong a film for me compared to his others, but there are scenes in it that will impress you. Especially the final one. (25/07/2014)

Heavenly Creatures captivates mainly thanks to its chilling premise based on a true story and the amazing performances of Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey. In some of the fantasy sequences from the fourth world, you could feel Peter Jackson's later films, (The Lord of the Rings or The Lovely Bones) – already then, a deep sense of fictional worlds was dormant within him. Even though I knew from the beginning how the film would end, I was still on edge until the very end. (02/11/2019)

If someone else had made it, it would have been a mere descriptive story, fit for prime time TV, but Peter Jackson turned it into a riveting film brimming with directorial ideas that are simply incredible. Who knows, maybe the Oscar nominations helped Jackson convinced the bosses at New Line Cinema to finance Lord of the Rings. (05/08/2002)