Heavenly Creatures · reception & legacy

1994 · Peter Jackson

How Heavenly Creatures has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

In 1994 it stunned people that the splatter-gore guy behind Bad Taste and Braindead could make this — it won the Silver Lion at Venice and an Oscar nod for its screenplay. Now it's read as the hinge of Peter Jackson's whole career, the film that proved he could handle scale and feeling before Lord of the Rings, and many fans still call it his best.

What's debated

Fans still argue over whether the film romanticizes a real murder — and whether its swooning queer reading honors the girls or projects onto real, still-living people who disputed it.

Its footprint

It's the ur-text of the 'obsessive girlhood friendship' micro-genre, endlessly cited in that lineage, and its plasticine fantasy-world sequences previewed the effects ambitions Jackson's WETA would become famous for. Melanie Lynskey's Yellowjackets-era stardom sent a whole new generation back to it.

Where it stands

A 90s canon staple and enduring Letterboxd favourite — the 'you must see pre-LOTR Jackson' film, and a queer-cinema touchstone.

★ Did you know? It was the film debut of both Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey — and around its release, journalists revealed that the real Juliet Hulme had been living for decades as bestselling crime novelist Anne Perry, a bombshell that made headlines alongside the film.