Heavenly Creatures

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I saw this again the other night for the first time in a few years and it completely blew me away again.

I've always been a huge fan of this film (the name Lynskey was grabbed from one of its stars) and I think it's still Pete Jacksons best (*batons down hatches for inevitable LOTR comments*). I don't think I've seen anything quite like it before or since.

So what do we think? Is the lesbian scene unneccesary? Is the friendship not portrayed darkly enough? Is Kate Winslet annoying? Are the girls too sympathetic / not sympathetic enough? Should the mother character have been featured more heavily to make the murder more shocking?

Opinions . . . .

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 17:54 (6 years ago) Permalink

I saw it for the first time, and was really blown away. I'm not quite too sure why, either. I think the fact that we're presented with two quite sympathetic characters who commit a totally brutal act is one of the main appeals of the film: very few directors would take such a risk. The slow descent into madness as well just feels right. It's also carried out with the delirious glee of small girls playing as well, the scene where Pauline goes to Juliet's house for the first time and she's running around dressed as a fairy princess really encapsulates the whole feel of the movie. And then there's the ever present sense of complete doom that something really bad is going to happen. Plus it has naked Kate Winslet as well, which can't hurt.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

I think, above all, it resonates with me and a number of other people nowadays because it deals with the death of childhood.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:04 (6 years ago) Permalink

It's a great film. I love it.

It's not as good as Braindead, though.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:07 (6 years ago) Permalink

the mother's murder wuz DISTURBING (i know that was the point, but still)

― Vic (Vic), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:09 (6 years ago) Permalink

"It's not as good as Braindead, though."

So true, Dead-Alive (its other name) truly is one of the funniest films of all time - no hyperbole there. How many other narratives deal with metaphors such as mother figure = Sumatran rat monkey??? Beware: if you do not like exorbitant amounts of gore, avoid.

― Vic (Vic), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:12 (6 years ago) Permalink

i think the mother's very extremely evident worn-down worry and fear-anger-love towards pauline — all the stuff her daughter can't teach herself to see — is heartbreakingly exact, as is the moment when pauline says "treat yrself", where her tenderness towards her mum very nearly reasserts itself at the next-to-last second

i also love pauline's furrowed-brow glare

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:27 (6 years ago) Permalink

It certainly is Jacksons best film - and Winslets, come to that. The scene which leads up to the moider is breathtaking, the sense of the mother's impending doom is one of the best moments of true horror of any movie I've seen.

― DavidM (DavidM), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:36 (6 years ago) Permalink

I watched, into the night, but didn't really think it that good.

I agree about the strange, disturbing wickedness of the crime (but it's odd cos their 'motives' are not self-consciously 'evil': ie. they are 'misguided'? Not sure about this). Somehow I was struck by how child-murders-adult is just as obscene an 'idea' as child-murders-child.

Also struck by the landscape's anticipation of The Lord of the Rings.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:44 (6 years ago) Permalink

Superb and funny (and sad) script as well, it's packed with so many great lines. Winslet, particularly, delivers hers with a great panache:
"Cheer up! All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases! It's all frightfully romantic!"

― DavidM (DavidM), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 18:49 (6 years ago) Permalink

Is the lesbian scene unneccesary?

What sort of mentalist question is that?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 19:02 (6 years ago) Permalink

I think it's still Pete Jacksons best (*batons down hatches for inevitable LOTR comments*).

wait till the 'Feebles" get ahold of you....

― brg30 (brg30), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:07 (6 years ago) Permalink

Me and my friends used to say that watching it with a girl pretty much guaranteed getting laid later that night.

"What are you doing tonight Aaron?"
"Me and the girl are watching Heavenly Creatures and then we're gonna have sex."

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:24 (6 years ago) Permalink

??why??

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:35 (6 years ago) Permalink

Matricide gets the ladies going!

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 22:36 (6 years ago) Permalink

I heart the 1950s underwear.

The Juliet Hulme (Kate WInslet) character is now Anne Perry, a crime novelist. In her book 'The Face of a Stranger', the murder is committed by bashing a man's head in with a poker. I can't decide how much I should read into that.

― Madeleine (Madeleine), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 23:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

oh yeah... I think it had to do with the fact that nutty girls were really into that movie. Now that I think about it, I have no idea, but that's forever what I associate with this movie.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 03:03 (6 years ago) Permalink

I really need to see this again, but I still take "Dead Alive" over it. I definitely prefer "Heavenly Creatures" to anything Jackson's done since.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 03:05 (6 years ago) Permalink

I saw this fake documentary on TV the other night by Jackson about a New Zealand dude who flew before the Wright brothers, then invented the movie camera, sound film and colour film and made an epic about Salome set in a huge hidden city that he built. It wasn't that great.

But HC is bloody awesome.

― Keith McD (Keith McD), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 03:39 (6 years ago) Permalink

wait till the 'Feebles" get ahold of you....

Now we're talking.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 04:03 (6 years ago) Permalink

haha Keith Forgotten Silver was k-grebt because it was presented in upsidedown as FACT & everybody believed it & got all patriotic etc etc then reacted with predictable bewilderment/anger/shame etc when the TRUTH of the matter was hem hem exposed.

Brain Dead & Heavenly Creatures are probably unequaled in depictions on (immediate) postwar NZ.

(um Heavenly Creatures is one of my favourite films but erm I'll try & get back online later & etc).

― Ess Kay (esskay), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 05:38 (6 years ago) Permalink

Nobody's mentioned that Fluffy Sarah is actually *in* "Heavenly Creatures".

― Tag, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 09:21 (6 years ago) Permalink

i saw it for the first time on bbc too, and it was indeed very good. in my opinion, that is...

― weasel diesel (K1l14n), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 09:32 (6 years ago) Permalink

yeah this movie rules! has anyone here ever visited the murder site, i'll show you if we ever happen to be in chch at the same time

― duane, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 10:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

Oh bugger!! I forgot it was on and ONCE MORE have I missed the opportunity to see the film in which I play a starring (hem-hem possibly) role.

― Sarah (starry), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 10:18 (6 years ago) Permalink

"Lynskey", do you know that Melanie Lynskey was also in one of THEE WORST MOVIES EVER, that being Snakeskin. I know it's quite boggling how a movie with Space Dust and Violet from Space Dust in it could be bad but it is utterly appalling. Oh yeah and she was in Sweet Home Alabama lately too and that suxes too (yeah I've seen it!).

― spectra, Thursday, 23 January 2003 00:36 (6 years ago) Permalink

oh yeah, I saw a bit of the Feebles and it did nothing for me. And I love Dead Alive. Maybe the Feebles gets better as it goes on but coming into it knowing it was about naughty muppets everything seemed rather anticlimactic.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 23 January 2003 03:01 (6 years ago) Permalink

I think Jackson's earlier gore films are not that well directed or shot. I'm a fan of his, and a huge horror fan, and appreciate many aspects of his early work, but they're not great films (to me).

― Sean (Sean), Thursday, 23 January 2003 03:05 (6 years ago) Permalink

oh yeah, I saw a bit of the Feebles and it did nothing for me.

Anthony alas is no longer my hero.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 23 January 2003 03:42 (6 years ago) Permalink

yeah "meet the feebs" was the worst peter j. flick until "the frighteners"

― duane, Thursday, 23 January 2003 07:23 (6 years ago) Permalink

No, Feebles is the bestest and is my precious.

― Nicole (Nicole), Thursday, 23 January 2003 14:08 (6 years ago) Permalink

2 years pass...

I just re-viewed this movie last night -- it grows on me more each time. I've just viewed Anne Perry's Wikipedia entry and...did you know it took 45 HITS to kill the mother? That fact makes the thing a zillion times more horrifying to me. There are a lot of hits in the film (heard mostly, not seen), but its still less than 10 I'd say.

― Roxymuzak, Mrs. Carbohydrate (roxymuzak), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 20:34 (3 years ago) Permalink

3 years pass...

omg from Anne Perry's Wikipedia:

"For a period she lived in the United States, where she joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...Although she admits regretting that the incident took place, Perry has been openly evasive of her accountability for her role in the murder and believes that through her faith she has successfully shed all responsibility for her crime."

Mormons!

― we are normal and we want our freedom (Abbott), Saturday, 7 November 2009 02:53 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

at least this movie is still great and creepy as hell. wish melanie lynskey was in more stuff.

― Nhex, Saturday, 7 November 2009 03:03 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

Is boggling that Winslet went on to global superstardom and Lynskey went on to play Charlie's mad stalker on Two and a Half Men.

― ailsa, Saturday, 7 November 2009 09:06 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

Overdue for the uncut, hi-def blu-ray etc treatment imo.

― DavidM, Saturday, 7 November 2009 10:00 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

Melanie so much hotter than Kate, which is saying a fair bit

― Niles Crane (Niles Caulder), Saturday, 7 November 2009 10:33 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

yes mate

― DavidM, Saturday, 7 November 2009 10:35 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

Weren't they underage when they made HC? You dirty rotters.

I think I saw something the other day suggesting that Melanie Lynskey is about to be in another film.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 10 November 2009 22:48 (1 week ago) Permalink

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