I suppose there will be a new audience for this and other early Peter Jackson movies since his recent blockbusters.
In approaching these, you have to think of the architecture of them first. I think that's where Jackson starts and then he just fills in. The architecture of the Tolkein things was given to him and immutable, so they don't count.
But just think about the shape of "King Kong." Its a movie about a guy making a film, and he captures the writer of that film in the film, so his reality and that of his movie within fold together. The movie gets out of hand, so he sedates it. Then it is reformed into a New York stage show (more real) and similarly gets out of control. There are other folds involved, but this is why he came to the project and how he saw it.
"Heavenly Creatures" is about an obsessive relationship that switches between the reality of the characters in the movie and a sort of fantasy movieworld populated by Orson Welles figures (made of clay). All of his movies have similar folds, and so does this one.
This is a show about a guy who puts on a show with collaborative ghosts. He somehow gets the control of the larger ghostworld tied up in this so the inner show gets out of control. See how similar this is to "King King"? And why he chose to make it instead of "King Kong" because he just couldn't get the funding he wanted.
So it has a clever, clever architecture, but unfortunately is not a very good movie.
There's an interesting historical note though. In this movie, Jackson gave the New Zealand special effects company, WETA, its first real break.
You know, there are a ton of these companies now, and a flood of movies that use them. Somehow, WETA does something well that the others don't do at all. WETA somehow is able to work with directors to talk them into a flying camera that does things crane-bound cameras in the real world cannot. You won't see it here, instead look in "Kong" and "Van Helsing." But this is where they got their start, and we can be thankful for that.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.