Film Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

What happens if maternal instincts never kick in? Tilda Swinton’s character Eva has just born a son, Kevin, who won’t stop screaming. He gets older but still needs diapers at age five or six, yet he can obstinately count to fifty when asked what number comes after seven. He constantly sports a look of contempt for his mother, yet runs to Daddy smiling, and cheerfully asks how his day went. John C. Reilly’s goofy “hey, buddy!” character Franklin thinks, “Oh he’s just being a kid,” but Eva sees that there is in fact something very wrong with Kevin.

The movie weaves together a story through flashbacks to Eva’s past from her depressing, bleak, and terrifying present. Kevin has done something unspeakable, and in the end we find out just how rotten he is. What went wrong? Was it nature, or nurture? Maybe it was both. Tilda does an exceptional performance as a woman who was once happy, but ends up living every parent’s nightmare, and Ezra Miller hits the menace and madness right on the spot. A really weird movie, and one I won't be seeing again.