Best movie of 2011. Really can't say enough about the job Ramsey does here. A star is born in the director's field, perhaps. Hands down the best editing in a 2011 film. Not is it a visual masterclass at both a micro scene and macro, repeating scenes and details early popping up later level, but I haven't been this blown away by an audio attention to detail in a long time. As hard hitting as it is, still ends up being a film's film in craft (I'm sure a lot of directors would've gone for the minimalist ugly cam approach). Ramsey has a difficult job making a fun watch (as all movies should be) out of the most brutal of material - But I thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling and unweaving of the tragedy and seeing step by step the mistakes the primary characters make. It's an incredible horror film, framed in a mind falling apart with memories swirling and 16 years of regret destroying someone at once - Scary as hell even when you know what's coming (one scene involving a window and sprinker near the end in particular)... as the years pass your fear and squirming tension about this dangerous monster on screen just builds and builds, having the effect a great horror film should

Tilda is unreal. Ezra is like a mini Anton Chigurh in scariness. And Reilly is Reilly - which is a perfect touch because his character is meant to be the foolish blubbering weakling and as equally to blame for Kevin becoming a monster as Eva, by enabling his actions and patting him on the back instead of disciplining him, or using his position as the parent Kevin listens to as a guiding force and not providing the hard direction or masculine father authority figure Kevin needed. Eva and Frankin's mistake is weakness. They're afraid to talk to each other about Kevin, about making the move to get psychiatric help, about playing it hard with him in discipline and doing something that will make him like them less. Eva's weakness is needing to be loved and thus she backs down from the challenge of facing the situation, of trying to take away the archery set when she knows the danger because of how Kevin and Franklin would react, of standing up when she suspects the drain cleaner incident was from him (And on that note, I've never been more squirmy and terrified about a scene that hasn't happened yet than when seeing that eyepatch and the sister being born healthy. Shook me up much more than the arm in 127 Hours). Kevin controls Eva and Franklin from the start by their need to be liked by him. Eva knows it but doesn't act, Franklin is just too big of a fool to see through his mask. As is the case with many monsters, it's the inability to act by people around them to turn them in that is just as to blame for their actions. Eva had 0 excuse or defense after the hamster/eye incident. The blood is on her hands. These failings are why it's a tragedy and seeing these mistakes made one by one as Kevin's life progresses is brilliant

And I thought the ending was bril, although it surprised me at first when it appeared it was going to end at the pit of the heart of darkness. It was a perfect ending from the perspective of Eva's mistake being her weakness and denial.

Just an unreal movie, both a year best one in filmmaking strength and mastery of hand and loaded with fascinating characterization and meaning about action and inaction and its consequences, silence and avoidance, regret and guilt...

Excellent and incredibly disturbing. This is easily the scariest movie of 2011 and is so tense throughout that it almost becomes unbearable. Tilda Swinton is phenomenal, as is Ezra Miller - both are definitely award-worthy, and Lynne Ramsey's direction is brilliant. A-

Much liking. 7/10.

Very well-made film. It's sad it couldn't score a single Oscar nomination. The directing by Lynne Ramsey is some of the best of the year. Tilda and Ezra Miller are terrific. I've heard some blame the mother, but honestly if Kevin were my child I'd have probably snapped and killed him. I don't blame her at all. I felt bad for her. This kid was a fucking monster from the get-go. And the father was annoyingly clueless. Maybe they blame her for not doing something about his behavior sooner, but I'm not sure what she should have done. There wasn't proof and people would just think she was being crazy.

Anyway, great movie with a terrifying conclusion.

A-

Thought it was terrific. Tilda wuz robbed.

I have to say, I wasn't impressed. This plays as a clichéd "art-house" version of several honest genre films: The Omen, The Good Son, Orphan, etc. The constant "artistic" adornments, including the oppressive red color palette and the presentation of events out of chronological order, are at times persuasive, but just headache-inducing at others, and the film feels art directed within an inch of its life. Any sense of humanity, of genuine ache and fear and sorrow, is obscured by the film's constant need to do psychedelic audio/visual cartwheels. Because it knows, on a deep and unavoidable level, it has nothing to say and is going through familiar motions, so its only recourse is to hide behind flash and technique.

Tilda Swinton, being the good indie icon she is, pinches and lunges and sighs and suffers with style, but her convincing performance can't compensate for the vacuous nature of the enterprise. John C. Reilly has next to no presence in a film almost forceful in its disinterest in his experience as a father, and his character is such a stale horror cliché: the one who says "it's just the wind, it's just the wind" until the ghost pops out and tears him limb from limb.

And the character of Kevin, beneath the icy stares and feline physicality, is uninteresting because he's too perfect a villain, too pure an evil, with the film even indicating he began his game of "plague mother, fool father, be the devil" as an infant.

The Omen is pulpier and scarier. Beautiful Boy, however flawed, is more honest. Elephant is more provocative. American Beauty has more interesting characters. We don't need to see Kevin.

C-

Haaaaaaated this.

How did Kevin get away with blinding his sister? I know the parents weren't there at the time, but still. Wouldn't the sister say, "Oh, by the way, Kevin held me down and poured drain cleaner into my eye"? I s'pose we could assume he threatened her, but she never seems scared of him. In fact, the film emphasizes multiple times the fact she loves him even as he clearly despises and torments her. Even if he manipulated the situation due to her age--"You'll be able to see fairies if you put this magic liquid in your eye"--she is obviously old enough to put two and two together: Kevin told me to put this in my eye, then it burned, and now I can't see. She would at least be scared of him. I can accept ambiguity to a certain degree, but I can't conjure a single realistic answer.

Also, LOL at a bow-and-arrow school massacre.

I will laugh at everybody who mistakes 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' for a horror film.

Just because it's gaudily, pretentiously tarted up doesn't change the DNA.

Exactly. I bet you were searching your mind for silly horror comparisons already while you were watching the film. Your review tells me that, more than in the film, you were interested in categorizing it - something hobby reviewers tend to do in order to appear knowledgable.

I s'pose you're entitled to your opinion of how I watched this movie in my home (strange). It's nice to have the attention of a person who has spent six years expertly portraying a haughty fascist intellectual on an Internet forum.

It is what it is. It was a natural thought as the movie ended. "I've just seen another banal variation on The Bad Seed/The Omen, but with lots of heavy-handed visual motifs and see-what-I-can-do jigsaw-puzzle editing."

It's interesting you dismissively consider an attempt to classify a movie and consider it in the context of its genre "something hobby reviewers tend to do." I am just a "hobby reviewer," sure, but it seems to me even respected film academics are interested in genre trends and tropes.

I notice you didn't pounce when Shack also called it a horror movie. Because the review is glowing or just tl;dr?

It is a very good mlovie with a very good leading performance. The only thing that bothered me was the not-so-subtle overreliance on the color red. Too much "in your face". The rest was chillingly spot-on.

I made a bet. What actually happened is still for reality to decide.


That is practically what I criticized.


It would be if that were what I said, but there were two parts: less interested in A, more interested in B.


I did not read it.

I see the film more as a psychological drama than a horror film, though I won't deny there are horror elements.

I retroactively blame The Hunger Games.

Elements which you associate with horror films.

Tilda and Ezra were good but man was the story lacking here. The film doesn't know whether to blame Eva or not and Ezra is almost too evil given the context. **

I think this could be a terrifying movie for many people. It probably helps to be a mom.

So it's a horror movie and an impeccably well made one at that. Contrary to the vast ocean of shitty horror movies out there, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Why does the movie have to decide everything for you? I think it's up for you to decide yourself.

She's obviously not to blame since the movie indicates Kevin is evil and hyper-manipulative even as infant.

Unless you want to pull the "not every scene is objective reality" card.

Kevin is a sociopath by virtue of his parents' genetics and a murderer because his mother, who had long seen bad things coming, did not prevent it. She is to blame, and she does blame herself all through the film because she is unable to form a bond with her child, which she wants to love but cannot. Kevin is to blame, too. Although he does not feel remorse or pity, which is not his fault, he does know that what he wants to do is considered bad and will make people unhappy.

The film is about the relationship between Eva and Kevin, about what is supposed to be there and its sad absence.

It doesn't add up, in my estimation. Kevin is portrayed as this absolute evil, this force of pure manipulation and fury, from birth. Even as an infant, the film depicts him crying and screaming nonstop in his mother's presence, then pulling a behavior 180 the second the father is in earshot. He is this purely terrifying character. It is never, not for one single frame, suggested there might be an aching, vulnerable, scared child behind his eyes.

Yes, granted, they show the mother as feeling anxious and hesitant during the pregnancy and early years. A certain degree of postpartum depression, perhaps. But the inequity is too great for this to play, or play well, as a story of a distant mother and a troubled child forming a perfect machine for disaster. This may be the intent, but the dog doesn't hunt. "Mother is a bit cold, but doing her best, and would rather be traveling than moving to suburbia. Son becomes pint-sized Hannibal Lecter."

It adds up quite nicely if you refrain from putting everything in the usual boxes.

There is no 'absolute evil' if you do not believe in the category. If you assume nature rather than mainstream art as the basis of the conflict, you get something much more interesting. Also, it is suggested that he is vulnerable: when he is ill or whatever it was, the one time he lets his mother get close. What Kevin becomes is, of course, not solely the result of the relationship with his mother. He was born with certain inclinations; only the way it played out could have been influenced. Ted Bundy would have been a dangerous person even if your parents had raised him.

The theme of the film, I think, is how to deal with it. What do you do as a mother when you watch the 'bad seed' blossom, when it is your child, always innocent until it is too late?