Movies Directed by Peter Jackson: Best to Worst

Peter Jackson might forever be known as the guy who dragged all of us to Middle-earth,
but his directing career is a lot stranger, messier, and more experimental than three
massively successful fantasy epics. Before The Lord of the Rings won
a mountain of Oscars and became one of the most awarded and acclaimed film series in history,
Jackson was the splatter-horror kid from New Zealand making movies with homemade prosthetics
and a lot of fake blood.

In this guide, we’re ranking the major movies directed by Peter Jackson from best to worst.
That includes his cult horror gems, his game-changing fantasy trilogies, and his later
experiments with large-scale remakes and prestige dramas. Think of it as a tour through
the very weird, very ambitious mind of one filmmaker who went from micro-budget gore to
billion-dollar franchises.

How We Ranked Peter Jackson’s Movies

Ranking Peter Jackson’s films is tougher than sneaking past a Ringwraith, so here’s the
criteria we leaned on:

• Critical response and awards – Rotten Tomatoes / Metacritic scores,
  reviews from major critics, and awards recognition.
• Audience legacy – Fan rankings, discussion threads, and how often these
  movies still show up on “best of” lists and film forums.
• Ambition and craft – Visual innovation, storytelling risks, and how much
  the movie feels like only Peter Jackson could have made it.
• Rewatch value – If you stumble on it at 11 p.m., do you stay up way
  too late to finish it?

With that in mind, let’s wander through Jackson’s filmography from the heights of Mount Doom
down to the places even Gollum wouldn’t visit twice.

Peter Jackson Movies Ranked from Best to Worst

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

   If you’re surprised this is number one, you may be reading the wrong list.
   The Return of the King is the kind of victory lap most directors only dream of:
   a trilogy capper that sticks the landing so hard it walked away with 11 Oscars, including
   Best Picture, and helped the series rack up 17 Academy Awards and hundreds of other honors.

   The film brings every major arc to an emotional peak: Frodo and Sam’s brutal crawl toward
   Mount Doom, Aragorn’s acceptance of his crown, and the heartbreaking farewell in the
   Grey Havens. Jackson orchestrates it all with massive battle scenes, intimate character
   moments, and some of the most quoted fantasy dialogue of the last 20 years. The scale is
   epic, but the story never loses sight of its small, hobbit-sized heart.

   It’s also the movie where Jackson’s technical obsessions fully pay off: practical effects,
   miniatures, digital armies, and detailed production design merge into something that still
   looks impressive in an age of CG-everything. If one Jackson film deserves to sit on the
   cinematic throne, it’s this one.

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

   Fellowship is where the magic starts. This film had to introduce a huge cast,
   an entire mythology, and a world with its own history, languages, and politics, all while
   staying accessible to people who had never cracked open Tolkien. Jackson pulled it off with
   an almost impossible mix of clarity and wonder.

   From the quiet coziness of the Shire to the thunder of the Mines of Moria,
   Fellowship feels like a classic quest movie with an unusually rich emotional core.
   The chemistry of the Fellowship itself – Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Boromir, Gandalf, and the
   four hobbits – gives the film a warmth that later installments can’t fully recapture simply
   because the group starts splintering.

   Add in Howard Shore’s iconic score, Jackson’s love of sweeping New Zealand landscapes, and
   some beautifully economical storytelling, and you get one of the most influential fantasy
   films ever made.

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

   The middle chapter of a trilogy is usually where stories sag.
   The Two Towers is where Jackson leans into the war epic, splitting the Fellowship
   and raising the stakes on multiple fronts. Helm’s Deep, with its hours-long rain-soaked
   siege, is still a benchmark for large-scale battle filmmaking.

   This is also where Gollum truly enters the story as a fully realized character, thanks to
   Andy Serkis’s motion-capture performance and Jackson’s insistence on treating him as a
   tragic, broken person rather than just a CG creature. The film’s darker tone, political
   plotting, and escalating sense of doom make it slightly less “cozy” than
   Fellowship, but it sets up Return of the King perfectly.

   If you like your fantasy with a bit more mud, armor, and existential dread, this is your
   peak Jackson.

4. Heavenly Creatures (1994)

   Before orcs and hobbits, Jackson stunned critics with this haunting, fact-based psychological
   drama about two teenage girls in 1950s New Zealand whose obsessive friendship spirals into
   murder. The film was widely praised for its direction, imaginative fantasy sequences, and
   breakout performances from Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, earning near-universal acclaim
   from critics.

   Jackson uses surreal visual effects to bring the girls’ shared fantasy world to life,
   then slowly shows how their escapism becomes a dark, dangerous refuge. What’s impressive
   is how empathetic the film remains; it doesn’t excuse their actions, but it understands
   how isolation, repression, and fantasy can warp perception.

   For many film scholars, Heavenly Creatures is the moment Jackson proved he was
   more than a cult horror director – he could handle complex characters and moral ambiguity
   with real sensitivity.

5. They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

   Technically a documentary, but one so visually audacious that it demands a spot on the list,
   They Shall Not Grow Old takes century-old World War I footage and restores it with
   modern colorization, frame-rate correction, and sound design. The result is eerily immersive:
   the soldiers suddenly look like people you might see on the street today, not distant ghosts
   from a silent era.

   Jackson anchors the film with audio interviews from veterans, letting their first-hand
   accounts steer the story rather than imposing a heavy narrator or grand thesis. The focus
   is on everyday experience – boredom, terror, gross food, dark humor – not just tactics and
   timelines.

   It’s both a tech demo and a deeply humane piece of filmmaking, showing Jackson’s continued
   interest in pushing the boundaries of what archival cinema can look like.

6. Braindead / Dead Alive (1992)

   Before prestige fantasy, there was… possibly the goriest horror-comedy ever put to film.
   Released as Braindead in some markets and Dead Alive in others, this movie
   is a chaos buffet of exploding bodies, lawn-mower massacres, and slapstick zombie insanity.

   Underneath the cartoony gore is a surprisingly sharp sense of timing and an early showcase
   of Jackson’s talent for staging complex visual gags. It’s definitely not for the squeamish,
   but horror fans treat it as a cult classic and a high point in splatter cinema.

   If you only know Jackson from the Oscars stage, this one will either horrify you or make you
   want to high-five him for commitment.

7. The Frighteners (1996)

   Starring Michael J. Fox as a con-man psychic who can actually see ghosts,
   The Frighteners is a supernatural thriller that plays like a twisted mix of
   ghost story, murder mystery, and black comedy. It gave Jackson an early chance to use
   large-scale digital effects, experimenting with stretchy, cartoonish spirits well before
   he tackled CGI armies.

   The tone wobbles a bit between goofy and grim, but the movie has energy to spare and a
   surprisingly dark backstory involving a serial killer. Over the years it’s developed a
   strong cult following, especially among fans who like their horror with a little
   smart-aleck charm.

8. King Kong (2005)

   After conquering Middle-earth, Jackson cashed in his clout to remake the classic
   1933 monster movie he loved as a kid. His King Kong is big in every sense:
   a three-hour epic packed with dinosaur fights, a tragic gorilla performance, and a
   spectacular (if slightly indulgent) trip to Skull Island.

   Naomi Watts brings emotional grounding to the role of Ann Darrow, and Kong himself is
   rendered with a level of nuance and expressiveness that was cutting-edge at the time.
   Some viewers wish Jackson had trimmed the runtime, but as a passion project, it’s
   impressive how much love and craft is on screen.

   It may not be as tight as the LOTR films, but it’s one of the better modern
   monster remakes – and a great example of Jackson’s “why do it small when you can do it
   enormous?” philosophy.

9. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

   Among the three Hobbit films, The Desolation of Smaug is widely seen
   as the strongest. The pacing tightens up, the action scenes are inventive (yes, even the
   much-memed barrel chase), and Benedict Cumberbatch’s motion-capture performance as Smaug
   gives the film a charismatic villain.

   Still, you can feel the pressure of stretching a relatively slim children’s book into a
   bloated trilogy. Side plots and added characters sometimes pull focus, and the cliffhanger
   ending leans hard on the idea that you’ll buy a ticket for the next one.

   Taken on its own, though, this is a fun, visually rich adventure that shows Jackson still
   knows how to stage set pieces that feel physically grounded even when they’re completely
   impossible.

10. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

    The first Hobbit film has a lot of setup to do: re-introduce Middle-earth,
    present a new company of dwarves, explain why Bilbo leaves his comfortable hobbit life,
    and establish stakes big enough to justify another trilogy. Unsurprisingly, the movie
    takes its time doing all of that.

    When it works, it really works – Martin Freeman’s Bilbo is a delight, Gollum’s riddle
    scene is a standout, and the production design is as lush as ever. But some viewers find
    the extended prologue and detours slow things down, especially compared to the tighter
    structure of the LOTR trilogy.

    Think of this one as your re-entry point into Middle-earth: cozy, a bit shaggy, and very
    much in love with its own world-building.

11. Bad Taste (1987)

    Jackson’s debut feature is a no-budget, alien-invasion splatter comedy made with friends,
    spare time, and a determination to use up every bucket of fake blood in New Zealand.
    The plot – aliens harvesting humans for fast food – is almost beside the point.
    What matters is the gleeful creativity: homemade props, wild camera angles, and Jackson
    himself acting in multiple roles.

    It’s rough, it’s gross, and it’s absolutely not for everyone, but you can clearly see the
    future blockbuster director in the way he stages action and squeezes every cent out of
    his limited resources.

12. Meet the Feebles (1989)

    Imagine The Muppet Show if it had a nervous breakdown and you’re in the ballpark.
    Meet the Feebles is a filthy puppet satire about a variety-show troupe whose
    behind-the-scenes drama involves drugs, violence, betrayal, and just about every taboo
    you can think of.

    Some viewers find its anything-goes shock humor exhausting, but the film has a cult
    following for its sheer audacity and practical puppet work. It’s one of the purest
    examples of Jackson’s early career fascination with bad taste (in every sense of the term).

13. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

    The final Hobbit film is essentially one extended battle with some character
    beats sprinkled in – and whether that works for you depends on how invested you are in
    these specific dwarves and their various heroic deaths and tragic choices.

    On the plus side, Jackson can still choreograph large-scale fantasy warfare like almost
    no one else, and the film delivers plenty of spectacle. On the minus side, emotional arcs
    that could have been powerful sometimes feel rushed or over-explained, and the sheer volume
    of CGI makes parts of the movie feel less grounded than earlier Middle-earth battles.

    It’s not a disaster, but compared with the soaring high of The Return of the King,
    this finale feels more like an overstuffed encore.

14. The Lovely Bones (2009)

    Based on the bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones follows a murdered teenage girl
    watching from a limbo-like afterlife as her family grieves and her killer walks free.
    On paper, this sounds like the perfect combination of Jackson’s interest in emotional
    drama and his flair for fantasy visuals.

    In practice, the film struggles to balance tones. The serial-killer storyline is deeply
    unsettling, while the afterlife sequences lean heavily on bright, CG-heavy imagery that
    some viewers find cloying rather than moving. Critics and audiences were divided, and
    many rankings place it near the bottom of Jackson’s filmography despite strong work from
    Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci.

    It’s ambitious, and there are individual scenes that absolutely work, but as a whole
    it feels like several different movies trying to coexist in the same frame.

What Peter Jackson’s Filmography Tells Us

Look at this ranking and a pattern emerges: Jackson is at his best when he’s juggling
big, messy emotions with equally big visual ideas. Whether it’s the moral weight of carrying
the One Ring, the tragic obsession of two teenage girls in Heavenly Creatures,
or the attempt to make WWI soldiers feel like our contemporaries in
They Shall Not Grow Old, he’s always looking for ways to make huge stories feel
personal and immediate.

Even his weaker films are rarely boring. Sometimes the experiments don’t quite land, but
when they do, you get movies that change how fantasy, horror, or documentary storytelling
can look on the big screen. And if recent interviews are any indication, Jackson is far
from done – he’s reportedly working on multiple new screenplays and still involved in new
Middle-earth projects as a producer.

Experiences Watching Peter Jackson’s Movies: Fans, Feelings, and First Times

Talking about “the best” Peter Jackson movies is one thing; talking about what it’s like to
actually experience them is another. These films have a way of attaching themselves
to specific moments in people’s lives: the first time you sat in a dark theater and watched
Gandalf ride into Hobbiton, or the late-night dorm screening where someone insisted,
“You’ve never seen Dead Alive? We’re fixing that now.”

For a lot of viewers, the Lord of the Rings trilogy became a social event as much
as a movie experience. People lined up at midnight, marathoned extended editions with
homemade snacks, and built holiday traditions around rewatching the films once a year.
Even now, streaming marathons and fan rewatches keep the trilogy feeling oddly current;
its mix of sincerity, practical effects, and tactile landscapes offers a break from
today’s sometimes weightless CG spectacles.

Jackson’s horror work creates a very different kind of communal memory.
Braindead and Meet the Feebles are the sort of films people brag about
surviving. You don’t just watch them; you endure them with friends, laughing, cringing,
and occasionally asking, “Wait, this is the guy who directed
Return of the King?” Those early movies feel hand-made and transgressive in a way
that big-studio blockbusters rarely do. They remind audiences that major filmmakers often
start by doing something so weird and niche that it barely looks like a career move at all.

Then there are the “discovery” films – the ones people stumble onto years later and claim as
personal favorites. Heavenly Creatures, for instance, tends to shock viewers who
only know Jackson for hobbits. Its intimate scale and emotional intensity can feel more
gut-punching than an army of orcs. Meanwhile, The Frighteners often becomes a cult
comfort movie for fans who love horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Even the more divisive projects, like The Lovely Bones or parts of the
Hobbit trilogy, generate passionate debate. Some viewers connect deeply with the
emotional themes of grief and family in The Lovely Bones; others find the film’s
tonal shifts jarring. Some fans appreciate the extra lore and character time in the
Hobbit movies; others wish Jackson had kept things as lean as the book. That tension
is part of the experience of following a director over decades – you don’t just consume the
movies, you argue about them, defend them, and occasionally change your mind after a rewatch.

What’s striking is how often Jackson’s work is tied to shared experiences: family movie
nights, friend marathons, classroom discussions, online forums ranking every film in his
career. His movies invite immersion – whether that’s in a meticulously built fantasy world,
a grotesque horror gag, or the restored faces of soldiers who suddenly feel real instead of
historical abstractions. That’s why a “best to worst” ranking can never fully capture his
impact. You might agree with the order here, or you might mentally swap everything around.
Either way, if these films gave you a memory, a tradition, or just a solid three hours of
escape, Jackson has already done his job.