We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin was the most horrible 2 hours I’ve spent this year. This movie made me sick and I don’t want to see it ever again. I don’t want anyone to watch this horrible thing…

That being said it is one of the best movies I have seen this year.

Starring Tilda Swinton the movie opens crazy and very confusing. We watch a woman in what seems to be three or more different time periods. She seems to have problems – is she taking drugs? The confusion gets bigger when she gets slapped by a woman she meets because she looks happy.
At this point one is starting to wonder where all this is going, the narrative the craziness settles and we find out that the title character Kevin is the son of Swinton and he makes evil children in movie history look cuddly and innocent.

Kevin is not just bad, he is borderline psychotic – an evil without justification, superbly portrayed by Jasper Newell (Kevin age 6-8) and Ezra Miller (teenager Kevin). The actors are incredibly believable and Tilda Swinton is the connection for the audience. Her pain is our pain.
If you really are bold/crazy enough to watch this movie then please don’t go to wikipedia beforehand since the brief synopsis already gives away what Kevin is up to. Going into this movie without prior knowledge intensified the experience even more. One knows very early that Kevin must have done something really really bad (hence the bitchslap Swinton gets) so one toys what can happen… all while watching the horrible things Kevin does even before this event.

And the longer the movie went on, the more uncomfortable we got watching. Very soon we realized that whatever he did it would have been something incredibly cruel seeing as the things he did before were already evil enough to become the son of the Joker.

We need to talk about Kevin is that rare movie that rips you apart emotionally and therefore I can’t really recommend it. It is an amazing piece of art, connecting you with a conflict and making you feel what the characters feel. With each consecutive seen we grew uneasier – what would happen next? What horrible thing would he do now?

It went so far that the second Kevin started to spread marmalade on a bread we were panicking what he would do. Much like Swinton’s character one cannot help but expect the worst, no matter how mundane his actions are. And the sigh of relief when Kevin just ate the bread was a very relieved one.

It has taken director Lynne Ramsay a long time to transfer the book to screen but it paid off. The amoung of thought that has been put into every shot, every composition is mindboggling and you will probably not notice much due to the horrible story of Kevin that captures your attention.

We need to talk about Kevin is one of those rare movies that will scare you more than any horror movie ever could, that is so uncomfortably real one starts to question where the line between entertainment art and masochism has to be drawn.