Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson has a thing for the world of fantasy.
The director of the “Lord of the Rings” movies and “King Kong” (2005) said in a conference call earlier this month that he likes to watch and direct movies that feature odd characters and events.
In his newest film, “The Lovely Bones,” he created a film that’s unlike any movie he has ever directed, Jackson said.
The horror film stars Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon and Saoirse Ronan. The story begins with the brutal rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, Susie Salmon, played by Ronan.
In “The Lovely Bones,” Salmon remains alive in her own perfect world after she is killed, but the murder haunts her because there has been no justice.
The film, which is adapted from Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel “The Lovely Bones” from 2002, deals with what Jackson calls escapism.
“I like being swept away into a picture I know I’m never going to have in my real life, or meeting characters I’m never going to meet because they are so outrageous,” Jackson said.
Salmon continues to watch over her grieving family throughout the film, as well as her killer, George Harvey, played by Stanley Tucci.
Her father, played by Wahlberg, tries to piece together the murder, confident that his daughter would never have gone off with a stranger.
As the viewers discover in the film, the murderer is truly close to home.
Jackson said his favorite scene is when Susie Salmon’s spirit flees from Harvey.
In the scene, Salmon “returns to her house, a weird version of her house, and she can hear her parents’ voices. But she can’t see them or connect with them,” Jackson said. “The lighting in the house is weird, and she goes into this room upstairs … and in this room is Mr. Harvey.”
There, Salmon silently confronts him.
“I made it as creepy as I could without showing anything on screen,” he said. “There’s just him and her standing there. What’s creepy is the lighting, the music and the sound.”
The one struggle Jackson said he faced was being able to include only about half of the content from the book. He focused on two or three main characters to narrow the action.
The movie, produced by Dreamworks Studios, will be released in theaters by on Dec. 11. More information on the movie is available at lovelybones.com.
