Film

Heavenly Creatures

Peter Jackson's dramatisation of the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder case in New Zealand, about two teenage girls whose intense friendship curdles into something dangerous, told through swooping camerawork and garish fantasy interludes. Kate Winslet's debut is genuinely astonishing. It's lush, funny, and moving before it becomes horrifying — a coming-of-age story that never lets you forget where it's heading.

TMDb rating3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to films where a private world of imagination gradually swallows the real one, and where two young performers of intensity make every frame feel charged.

Skip it if you want a tidy, reassuring story; this is unsettling, feverish and more interested in mood and emotional pressure than in neat explanation of anyone's motives.

What it asks of you: Sustained attention and a tolerance for a restless, feverish tone; the fantasy sequences bleed into ordinary life, so you need to keep track of what is real.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Girl, Interrupted1999

Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie anchor a story about two young women whose bond in a psychiatric ward becomes as consuming and dangerous as any romance, with the same charged intimacy Winslet and Lynskey bring to their imaginary kingdom.

But It's glossier and more conventionally Hollywood than Jackson's film, softening some of the darker edges into a redemption-arc shape.

Girl, Interrupted poster

We Need to Talk About Kevin2011

Tilda Swinton is devastating as a mother reckoning with a child capable of monstrous violence, told in the same fractured, dreamlike style Jackson uses to show minds tipping past the point of return.

But It's colder and more clinical, offering no friendship to hold onto and very little warmth before the horror arrives.

We Need to Talk About Kevin poster

Thirteen2003

A ferocious, queasy portrait of a teenage friendship escalating into self-destruction, shot with the same handheld intimacy that makes you feel complicit in every bad decision the girls make.

But It trades Jackson's fantastical escape valve for grinding realism — there's no Borovnia to retreat into here.

Thirteen poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Heavenly Creatures

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Compulsion1959

Both are true-crime studies of a folie à deux — two clever young people building a private mythology of their own genius that justifies murder to no one but themselves.

A crisp, moody black-and-white dramatisation of the real Leopold and Loeb case — two brilliant young men whose sense of intellectual superiority convinced them murder was a kind of art, decades before Jackson told a similar story.

But It's stagier and more restrained than modern true-crime drama, with none of the visual flourish or fantasy sequences that make Heavenly Creatures so distinctive.

Compulsion poster
More like this (8)

The Talented Mr. Ripley1999

An obsessive, class-charged friendship curdling into deception and murder, gorgeously shot and genuinely seductive before it turns sour — the closest mainstream cinema gets to Heavenly Creatures' mix of beauty and dread.

But It's a thriller first and a character study second; the psychology is thinner than Jackson's slow-building portrait of two minds merging.

The Talented Mr. Ripley poster

Beautiful Creatures2000

A wickedly funny British crime caper about two women bound together after a killing, with real DNA-level kinship to Heavenly Creatures' true story of female friendship tipping into violence.

But It plays the aftermath for dark comedy rather than tragedy, so the emotional weight is nowhere near as heavy.

Beautiful Creatures poster

Foxfire1996

A group of teenage girls forms a fierce, protective, ultimately dangerous bond against the adult world, capturing the same intoxicating sense of a private universe only the group can enter.

But The politics are broader and more overtly feminist than personal, and the ending doesn't carry the same tragic weight.

Foxfire poster

Monster2003

Charlize Theron's transformation as real-life killer Aileen Wuornos shares Heavenly Creatures' interest in how ordinary lives curve toward violence, and how love can look like the last thing keeping someone sane.

But It's grimier and more overtly brutal, without the fantasy sequences that give Jackson's film its strange lyricism.

Monster poster

Mean Creek2004

A low-key indie about teenagers whose casual cruelty spirals into something none of them can take back, sharing Heavenly Creatures' interest in how quickly kids can cross a line they don't understand.

But It's much smaller and quieter, with none of the visual imagination or operatic scale of Jackson's film.

Mean Creek poster

The Elephant Man1980

Gus Van Sant's detached, floating camera follows ordinary teenagers toward an act of violence with no explanation offered, echoing the way Jackson refuses to fully explain what pushed Pauline and Juliet over the edge.

But It's austere and almost anti-dramatic — there's no romance, no fantasy, no release, just dread accumulating in real time.

The Elephant Man poster

Meet the Feebles1989

Same director, same fascination with elaborate invented worlds curdling into violence — just aimed at gross-out comedy instead of tragedy. It's the id where Heavenly Creatures is the superego.

Peter Jackson's own gleefully deranged puppet movie, made five years before Heavenly Creatures — a gross-out, blood-soaked variety show starring foul-mouthed felt animals, proof he's always been obsessed with imaginary worlds turning grotesque.

But It's deliberately vile, juvenile splatter comedy with zero of the emotional seriousness or craft that makes Heavenly Creatures so affecting.

Meet the Feebles poster

My Brilliant Friend2018

Both dramatise a female friendship so total it becomes a shared identity, where the girls' inner world outweighs family, class and everyone else — just without a body at the end.

An Italian-language adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novels tracing a friendship between two girls that becomes the defining, consuming relationship of both their lives, with the same sense that the friendship outweighs everything else around them.

But It's a slow, multi-season commitment with no crime at its centre — the intensity is emotional and social rather than violent.

My Brilliant Friend poster

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Recommended by

Girl, Interrupted, The Virgin Suicides, Badlands, Wisconsin Death Trip, Jawbreaker, Extracurricular, The Perfection, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, Thoroughbreds, Olivia, Swoon, Fallen, The Roommate, Foxfire, Kurt & Courtney, Murderous Maids, Water Lilies, An American Crime, Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, Ginger & Rosa, Strings, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, Crush, Lost and Delirious, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, The Silent Twins, Love & Death, Memento Mori, Bare, Breathe, An Awfully Big Adventure, Crucible of Terror, Ghost Story, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Fun