Heavenly Creatures

Jackson’s visionary triumph, heightened by the blazing performances of Lynskey and Winslet and by Alun Bollinger’s whirling camera, is in capturing the delirium as the girls whip themselves into an erotic frenzy with Mario Lanza records, semi-naked dances in the woods and revenge fantasies. Read full review

This ability to get inside hysteria and obsession, the skill to make us feel sensations as intensely as its protagonists, is what makes “Creatures” memorable. Read full review

Stunning. Read full review

An exhilarating retelling of a 1950s tabloid murder, it combines original vision, a drop-dead command of the medium and a successful marriage between a dazzling, kinetic techno-show and a complex, credible portrait of the out-of-control relationship between the crime’s two schoolgirl perpetrators. Read full review

Jackson has called "Creatures" a "murder story about love, a murder story with no villains." His generous approach makes it an unforgettable experience. Read full review

The most remarkable accomplishment of Heavenly Creatures is its unfailing ability to compel us to identify with its two young Salomes. They're right to sense that the adult world around them means to snuff them out, and you can understand and even sympathize with their desperate need to muster a preemptive strike so they can stay together. Heavenly Creatures is potent, daring, invigorating filmmaking. [23 Nov 1994, p.29]

A stunning achievement. [14 Oct 1994]

That's exactly why Heavenly Creatures is the small masterpiece that it is: because the film roots so deeply and eagerly into the psychology - and pathology - of its characters. It takes us to a lush place, defined by passion and imagination, where reality intrudes with surprising, gruesome results. [25 Nov 1994, p.03]

A gorgeously realized portrait of obsession, this based-on-truth vision of two teen-age girls driven to murder by their fantasies is one of the most audacious films of the year. [2 Dec 1994, p.18]

Heavenly Creatures, which remains Jackson's best movie, his most serious and his most daring, is 99 minutes long and doesn't waste a single one. It manages to be both shocking and intoxicating, a portrait of giddy teenage escapism which yanks itself free from reality in disturbing, and finally deadly, ways. Jackson has an obvious flair for fantasy - an obsession with it, one might say - but this is a film about its dangers, not just its temptations. [17 Nov 2012]

What is missing is some balance; Pauline and Juliet are portrayed from their own idealized point-of-view, while parents and others who object to them are as silly, pompous and uncaring as the girls obviously perceived. Crime doesn't pay in Heavenly Creatures, but it's rationalized in expert, provocative fashion. [6 Jan 1995, p.7]

Jackson's film is distinguished by the intensity of the girls' secretive relationship. If the busy camera movements used to convey the heady exhilaration of their early encounters are irritating, the sense of claustrophobic immersion in private mysteries is palpable. Acted with conviction, and directed and written with febrile vibrancy. Read full review

As Juliet, Winslet is a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she’s in. She’s offset perfectly by Lynskey, whose quietly smoldering Pauline completes the delicate, dangerous partnership. Read full review

Heavenly Creatures is a devilishly clever and damnably accurate reflection of that duality - twinning the mystique of adolescence with the mystery of murder, it's a wonderfully natural recording of an awfully unnatural act. [20 Jan 1995]

Fueled by witty imagery, wonderful performances, and careful direction, Heavenly Creatures is a must-see for those who like their films a little on the adventurous side. And while many will feel that they are discovering the work of an intriguing new director, die-hard fans may fear that Jackson is “selling out” to a mainstream audience because the picture isn't loaded with severed limbs and spurting arteries -- but, rest assured, this is hardly the case: Heavenly Creatures is the director's most unconventional movie to date -- and is coupled with both a delicate maturity and confidence that makes his evolution as a filmmaker all the more thrilling to observe and lead one to wonder what this unpredictable talent will come up with next. Read full review

Revealed in unforgettable fashion by a capable director, the events that unfold in this film are not easily forgotten. Read full review

What makes Jackson's film enthralling and frightening is the way it shows these two unhappy girls, creating an alternative world so safe and attractive they thought it was worth killing for. Read full review

The performances are all superb, but special mention should go to Melanie Lynskey, a first-time film actress, who brings a frightening calm to the role of Pauline, and Sarah Peirse as Pauline's mother, whose main fault seems to be exhibiting too much care and concern for her strong-willed and imaginative daughter. [25 Nov 1994, p.M2]

Jackson uses seamless, state-of-the-art visual effects to capture the girls' shared fantasies. One would expect nothing less from the director of the technically proficient horror movie, "Dead/Alive." The surprise here, and the key to the film's success, is his casting and handling of the young unknowns playing the girls. [23 Nov 1994, p.D3]

If the pleaures of Heavenly Creatures remain defiantly on the surface, on that level the movie is a dazzler. Read full review

Taut, clever, and fronted with two excellent performances, this is a clever choice for Jackson's first step into mainstream filmmaking. Read full review

The Kiwi native proved he had more up his sleeve than trashy schlock.

Heavenly Creatures is a rare film that can be watched and re-watched, revealing more and more layers of subtext and meaning with each viewing. This is no simple tale of murder – this is a tale of obsession, friendship, imagination, gender politics, family and much, much more, and is almost certainly Jackson’s finest film to date. Read full review

A disturbing, boldly conceived story. Read full review

Stunning. [25 Nov 1994, p.87]

But the most piercing thing about Heavenly Creatures is Jackson's refusal to forgive the girls. He indeed understands them and empathizes with them. But when he has to, he exposes the horrid squalor and ugliness of the crime, which, after all, was a blood-soaked execution, crude as anything done in Rwanda. [9 Dec 1994]

Heavenly Creatures uses its special effects ingeniously, and unlike Jackson's previous credits (the cult gorefests Dead Alive and Bad Taste), it's a movie with serious artistic ambitions. He immerses you in the heightened, giddy mindset of these two girls so completely, you can understand why they'd fight so ferociously to defend it. It's a strange, vivid movie, with moments that capture the texture of dreams -- and the fervor of teenage friendship and romance -- with thrilling precision. [9 Dec 1994, p.G5]

Stylish and eerily compelling before it overplays its campy excesses, Heavenly Creatures does have a feverish intensity to recommend it. Read full review

A melancholy but engrossing account of an obsessive relationship that led to murder. [27 Jan 1995, p.L23]

With Heavenly Creatures, we're always on the outside looking in. And if that view is far from boring, it lacks some of the high drama that a more inside perspective might have offered. [23 Dec 1994, p.26]

Unlike the campy excess of Jackson's earlier Dead Alive, this kind of deliberate overkill—which extends to the broad caricatures of the girls' families as well as the girls' feverish fantasy life—ultimately points toward a dearth of ideas rather than a surfeit, though the story remains sufficiently interesting and troubling to hold one's attention. Read full review