Heavenly Creatures

It was the film that put Peter Jackson on the international film circuit. It was the film that rocketed Kate Winslet to fame. It was the film based on a crime that shocked a nation.

A starkly original film-going experience based on a true life story, Heavenly Creatures is a stirring drama that offers up the unexpected. The story concerns Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, outcasts who become best friends, whose bizarre fantasy life becomes more intense as their bond becomes increasingly more obsessive. When Pauline's mother tries to intervene and split the girls apart, they bring about a terrible revenge, resulting in what is to this day still a celebrated and controversial case.

Kate Winslet (Titanic) and Melanie Lynskey (The L Word) create two sympathetic and yet uncomfortably eerie characters in riveting portrayals. Peter Jackson's direction, meanwhile, offers up an ethereal fantasy world into which the two girls escape; a vision of acclaimed Weta (Lord of the Rings) special effects that were truly groundbreaking at the time.