We Need to Talk About Kevin

Indie, Dark
3 stars
Dark and Depressing, but this is not a horror film. Tilda Swinton stars as the mother of an evil son (Ezra Miller, City Island). I can’t describe too much without giving the ending away, but it’s clear from the start that something terrible has happened and she is ostracized from society. John C. Reilly co-stars as her husband. I thought this would be a guilty pleasure film like The Bad Seed or The Omen, but it so much darker and told mostly in flashbacks, that aren’t in chronological order, which I found annoying. I also was irritated that the mother didn’t reprimand and discipline her son when he behaved badly. To get an idea of the creepy weirdness of it, the opening scene is a dream of Hell with people mashed together and covered in squashed tomatoes while they toss more soupy tomatoes over each other’s heads. After seeing the ending, I can see that this subject matter would be interesting from the mother’s point of view; I just wish it was presented differently. Good acting, but I didn’t really like this film at all.