One of the more distinctive directorial voices in the wave of New Zealand cinema which made such an impressive splash in the 1980s and 90s, Jackson was interested in cameras from an early age. When he finally bought a 16mm camera, he decided to make a short science-fiction comedy with it. Over three years later, he completed the feature-length result, "Bad Taste" (1988). Though many might not see past the film's lengthy streams of vomit and blood or what they consider to be the aptness of the film's title, Jackson's feature debut about aliens coming to Earth to hunt for human flesh to stock an outer-space fast food restaurant was not only garishly funny, but also an inventive spin on popular culture and generic conventions.

Jackson's films have an unabashed penchant for the grotesque mixed with a child-like playfulness with the possibilities of cinema. Their tone is humorous, in a manner both campy and celebratory, as well as being genuinely bleak. Unstable psychological states and unhappy family situations mix with extreme yet sometimes cartoonish violence and a satirical, densely referential glance at society and cinema itself. His second feature, "Meet the Feebles" (1990), was another venture into comic horror, but this time people, appropriately for Jackson's emerging style, were replaced with puppets, as a massacre of performers throws suspicion onto one Hilda the Hippo. He stayed with the same genre but once again used live actors for his international breakthrough film, "Dead Alive" (1993, originally titled "Braindead" in New Zealand). It proved so hilarious that its amazing gross-out quotient went down like a smooth custard, yet Jackson's emerging preoccupations with repressive parent-child dynamics and parricide gave the dessert just enough body.

Some saw Jackson's next film, "Heavenly Creatures" (1994), retelling the story of New Zealand's most famous murder case in decades, as both considerably more serious and a real departure for him. It was certainly the former but hardly the latter, as his restless visual stylistics and surprising sympathy for those who commit violence lent depth to a story of two teenage girls whose intense friendship leads to matricide. He and co-scenarist Fran Walsh received an Oscar nomination for their original screenplay. Jackson followed up with "Jack Brown, Genius" (1995), a comedy about a modern inventor and a medieval monk, and "The Frighteners" (1996), a Michael J. Foxstarrer about a psychic investigator. Both films had their moments but seemed like mere breathers coming before the most ambitious undertaking of Jackson's career, a move for which his intriguing combination of the whimsical and the fantastic on the one hand and the potently grim and downbeat on the other seemed well-suited--filming, in what was planned as three motion pictures, J.R.R. Tolkien's landmark mythological novel "The Lord of the Rings" (lensed 1999-2000). Once completed, the ambitious project as scheduled to roll out in installments over three years: "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), "The Two Towers" (2002) and "The Return of the King" (2003). The first installment, "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", earned praise from critics and audiences for its epic action and skillful take on very complicated material. The film received a near-record 13 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The superior special effects in the film also made a lasting impact and elevated the Jackson-backed F/X house WETA Workshop in New Zealand into the upper eschelons of movie magic practitioners. Jackson also re-edited the film, inserting over 30 minutes of unreleased material, for a special DVD version, resulting in an even more entertaining release. The second instalment, "The Two Towers," was released in 2002 to much fanfare, with many critics and moviegoers deeming it an even superior film to the first outing.