I see LOTR as very, very English. Tolkien feels those landscapes on his pulses. Jackson's landscapes are spectacular, but they're not felt in the same deep way. Besides, they're New Zealand landscapes, not English ones.

For me the creepiest sequences in the Books are the Mines of Moria and the Dead Marshes. I thought Jackson wasted his opportunities with both of them. With the first he opted for spectacle rather than suspense, and with the second he opted for a below-par studio set and some generic CGI spookiness.