Director: Peter Jackson
Year Released: 1994
Rating: 3.5
Two schoolgirls in New Zealand (Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet) find bliss in each others' company and concoct a dream world for themselves (in order to avoid the harsh realities of real life), but when their parents find their 'friendship' to be troubling and "unwholesome," they try to separate them, which leads to the two girls killing Lynskey's mum (shockingly, this is based on a true story). I still find this to be Jackson's most accomplished effort (to date) - yes, more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy - because of how it shows, step-by-step, how the "fantasy land" they create (of clay dolls and Mario Lanza and Orson Welles) can feasibly lead the two ladies to justify committing such a heinous act. Novelist Anne Perry - who the Winslet character is based on - has vehemently denied her and her co-conspirator are lesbians, but it's obvious - based on Pauline Parker's diary entries - that there was a profoundly intimate connection between the two, and the film deftly skirts potential accusations of homophobia: the suggestion, then, is that obsessive love of any kind can lead to a dangerous (and misguided) Us-Versus-the-World radicalism.
