Heavenly Creatures
Directed by Peter JacksonPrecocious teenager Juliet moves to New Zealand with her family and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. This friendship gradually develops into an intense and obsessive bond.
Where to Watch Heavenly Creatures
- ncte0December 20, 2025*Heavenly Creatures* (1994) is a disturbing and beautifully crafted psychological drama based on a true story. It explores adolescent obsession, fantasy, and emotional isolation, showing how imagination can become both refuge and danger. The film stands out for its intense performances and innovative visual style, which blends realism with surreal fantasy. Compared with movies like *The Virgin Suicides* or *Badlands*, it shares a focus on youthful alienation and moral transgression, but it is more intimate and psychologically dense. Unlike traditional crime dramas, it emphasizes inner worlds rather than suspense, making the tragedy feel unsettlingly personal.
- RazorbitzFebruary 22, 2025Teenage madness through the looking glass. A subdued early work of Peter Jackson's compared to his usual fare up to this point. Having never seen it until this past year, I was entranced by the winding whimsical madness the film weaves. An artistic retelling of a very real murder that occurred, this film casts a sympathetic light on the killers and the opressive lives they were leading that bloomed into a cultish obsession with a fantasy world the two young girls find themselves sucked into as an escape from their increasingly oppressive families try to tear them apart. This film is gay as hell, but is neither the beginning or ending for what transpires and the banal cruelty of the act, nor the derangement that leads up to it. Taking from real journal entries that color each scene and the mundane horrors of the real world, the murder is calculated in only so much as they can rationalize under the vast anxieties of youth; and it is in this the film examines with all the horror and humor that I've come to expect with Peter Jackson. Heavenly Creatures is indeed a heavenly watch; the cinematography sublime, the lighting soft, the wonderfully realized fantasy sequences as fun as they are haunting. The sense of forboding that permeates the melodrama of the two young girls so madly in love with themselves and each other plays out in an arc that could only be described as masterful, leaving enough to interpretation as to their motivations while making sure to underscore the reality their whimsy allowed them to escape from. I'm probably repeating myself because it's a really good movie! My only lament with Heavenly Creatures is that the pacing is at times plodding, and at times the dreamlike nature of the film only expounds upon this. Not one I have any desire to rewatch anytime soon, but an easy recommendation to anyone willing to journey down the rabbit hole.
Heavenly Creatures Trivia
Heavenly Creatures was released on October 14, 1994.
Heavenly Creatures was directed by Peter Jackson.
Heavenly Creatures has a runtime of 1h 49m.
Heavenly Creatures was produced by Jim Booth.
Precocious teenager Juliet moves to New Zealand with her family and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. This friendship gradually develops into an intense and obsessive bond.
The key characters in Heavenly Creatures are Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey), Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), Honorah Parker Rieper (Sarah Peirse).
Heavenly Creatures is rated R.
Heavenly Creatures is a Drama, Fantasy, Biography film.
Heavenly Creatures has an audience rating of 8.3 out of 10.
Heavenly Creatures had a budget of $5M.
Heavenly Creatures has made $3M at the box office.