Heavenly Creatures (1994)

[K1stpierre]

Discuss

[Goffe]

blah 45/100

[Jake Gittes]

Peter Jackson's finest hour as a director. I like LOTR more, I guess, but the tricky tonal shifts in Heavenly Creatures are more of his personal accomplishment: you take even one slightly wrong step, and the whole thing crashes and burns; Jackson, however, nails it, and the way he (along with Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey) does it is a sight to behold. In the hands of less daring filmmakers, the story of two girls murdering the mother of one of them might have easily gone for dry examination or cheap melodrama, but Jackson and his actresses dive headfirst into the characters' intense connection; the result is a film that's deeply beautiful, disturbing, funny and tragic in equal measures. 

Edited January 3, 2015 by Jake Gittes