We Need to Talk About Kevin review

When two guys pop up at the front door of thin suburban New York business woman Eva played by Tilde Swinton she is a bit alarmed given the fact that tons of people hate her around the town.  In fact, she is regularly assaulted, eggs are tossed at her while shopping, and she has even had red paint tossed over her front door.  So when she finds out that the guys on the front door just want to talk about her believe in the afterlife she is actually relieved and tells them that she already knows she is headed for hell.

This is most likely the only time you will laugh in the Lionel Shriver book or the film that was adapted from it, but director Lynne Ramsay wants it this way and the bleak film is something that stun and please the senses because while there is a bit of scattered comedy in the pieces of ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ it is certainly not the focus.  In fact, Eva is not even meant to be joking with the Mormons because as you get deeper into the film you see that she likely believes she is already in hell.

There are a lot of different elements that make up the film, including the fact that the color red is almost a visual essay throughout the film as the disintegration of the family is shown in pieces throughout a collage film.  Outside of the family getting torn apart you also get to watch the character of Eva who gives up her urban appeal and yearning for family life and eventually just accepts her fate that she is born to be bitter and that is all there is for her.

At its core, the best way to describe ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ is to explain it as a horror film for parents because what happens to Eva as a result of her son is something that no mother would ever want to live through.  Eva is not actually the villain, but is instead the crime committing Kevin that is played by Ezra Miller or even more convincingly as an evil child by Jasper Newell who does an excellent job at convincing you that you can see evil at all ages.

From the start of the movie you already know that Kevin has done something horrible given the fact that it starts with Eva pushing her way towards the high school through emergency vehicles and plenty od stunned people.  What he actually did is slowly untangled throughout the film and the focus is not really about the Columbine like event or even whey Kevin would have chosen to do it.  Instead, it’s focused on the relationship of the son and mother and where the break down was and how she can love him but still live with what has happened.

Every level of the film is actually amazing as Swinton offers postcards of Eva’s psyche in a very haunting fashion that director Ramsay offers up the audience with avant garde sound and plenty of visual affects that make them that much more eerie.  Swinton does an excellent job as the American housewife that has vulnerabilities and flaws and regrets her life even though she continues to live within its frame every single day even long after Kevin has made his impact on her world and an impact on everyone else that she now must face on a regular basis and be scorned by.

The movie will freak most parents out because the idea that bad things happen to good people and that a child can go that haywire without explanation is frankly one of the scariest things to image.  However, it will on the other hand at least make your relationship with your children look at a lot better.  The scarier thought is the fact that her indifferent parenting has taught him hate, and it’s the hate that she taught him that makes him act the way he does which is a threatening commentary on what parenting can do to a child.