Heavenly Creatures

Juliet Hulme relocates to New Zealand with her family, where a bookish, introspective girl named Pauline Parker catches her eye. The two quickly form a connection through a shared love of fantasy, literature, and a sense of being outsiders in their small Christchurch world. What starts as a private friendship, built on late night talks and imagined worlds, deepens into an all consuming alliance that reshapes how they see themselves and their surroundings. Peter Jackson frames their bond with shifts between ordinary town life and the lush, symbolic fantasies they invent together, a stylistic blend that mirrors their inner intensities. As their devotion grows, so does the risk they take and the limits they push in the name of belonging to their shared world and imagination.

Directed by Peter Jackson with a script by Fran Walsh, Heavenly Creatures draws on the real life Parker Hulme case in Christchurch. The film helped launch Jackson into stature as a bold storyteller outside the mainstream.

It helped establish New Zealand cinema as a home for daring intimate stories and put its two young leads on the international map. Winslet and Lynskey earned early critical praise, and the film's blend of fantasy with stark realism influenced later indie dramas.

Critics praised the atmosphere, performances, and how the screenplay treats obsession, loneliness, and the lure of literature as a refuge. The film quietly probes identity and power within adolescent friendships, balancing restrained realism with vivid dreamlike sequences to illuminate how imagination sustains and endangers those who lean on it.

The film earned recognition from major award bodies and helped launch the careers of its young leads. Critics and industry figures highlighted the screenplay and performances, cementing Heavenly Creatures as a standout early work from New Zealand cinema and a key bridge to Peter Jackson's later successes.