We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)

All Critics (185) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (142) | Rotten (44) | DVD (4)

Fragmented, dreamlike, a whir of memories and misery, We Need to Talk About Kevin is unsettling, but also somehow unnecessary.

March 9, 2012 Full Review

Steven Rea

Philadelphia Inquirer

Top Critic

Director Ramsay makes Kevin's impact all the more felt by coming at it from all angles.

March 9, 2012 Full Review

Tom Long

Detroit News

Top Critic

It's a hallmark of "Kevin's" emotional bravery and intellectual honesty that the questions haunt us long after the end credits roll.

March 8, 2012 Full Review

Colin Covert

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Top Critic

Some movies punish you, but you take it because you're getting something out of the bargain: an insight, a performance, art, adrenaline. Then there are the movies that punish you for the heck of it.

March 8, 2012 Full Review | Comments (5)

Ty Burr

Boston Globe

Top Critic

Ramsay may be aiming for a character study of Kevin, but she ends up merely listing the ingredients needed to make a murderer.

March 2, 2012 Full Review | Comments (8)

Rafer Guzman

Newsday

Top Critic

Lynne Ramsay's thoughtful, unnerving film works its strange power over viewers who are likely to find themselves as compelled as repelled by its fatally flawed key players.

March 2, 2012 Full Review

Ann Hornaday

Washington Post

Top Critic

A high school killing spree leads to a captivating examination of parenthood and the 'nature vs nurture' debate.

March 4, 2013 Full Review

Tom Glasson

Concrete Playground

A real-world horror movie -- for parents.

December 31, 2012 Full Review

Roger Moore

McClatchy-Tribune News Service

It may not be a crowd-pleaser, but it's not every day we get an emotional powerhouse of a film done this well.

September 17, 2012 Full Review

Jeff Beck

Examiner.com

We Need To Talk About Kevin is a brooding, unnerving but wholly rewarding film.

September 15, 2012 Full Review

Will Chadwick

We Got This Covered

It would be easy to say that the film would be nothing without Tilda Swinton. It wouldn't, but the narrative is quite engaging and Swinton's isn't the only terrific performance.

September 15, 2012 Full Review

Wesley Lovell

Cinema Sight

There's an infinitely more impactful movie to be made that deals with the same subject but doesn't take things to an unrealistic extreme. A son that's not the very spawn of the devil is a solid place to start.

August 27, 2012 Full Review

Erick Weber

NECN

One of the most chilling films of 2011

August 14, 2012 Full Review

Kevin Carr

7M Pictures

The best horror penetrates beyond external vibe to internal thought-process and the film never truly takes us within the mother's head.

July 31, 2012 Full Review

Dan Jardine

Cinemania

Now that the worldwide success of The Avengers has put the kibosh on Lynne Ramsay's egregious attempt to demonize the noble sport of archery, we can safely talk about Kevin in the warm light of Oscilloscope's visually okay/aurally spectacular Blu-ray.

May 29, 2012 Full Review | Comment (1)

Jaime N. Christley

Slant Magazine

Un drama psicológico tenso y abrumador, en algún punto quizás insoportable. Al final, nadie espera que se entienda por qué pasó lo que pasó, pero sí al menos que se tenga una aproximación a lo que es vivir con una pesadilla a cuestas.

May 20, 2012 Full Review

Enrique Buchichio

Uruguay Total

Whatever you think of the philosophical weight of Ramsay's film - I find it ... less nuanced than David Foster Wallace's one liner that Hobbes was simply "Rousseau in a dark mirror" - there's a fierce integrity in Swinton's performance.

April 29, 2012 Full Review | Comment (1)

Philip Martin

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Irony clashes with disturbing drama

April 15, 2012 Full Review

Marty Mapes

Movie Habit

A powerful look inside a mother's torment

April 15, 2012 Full Review

Robert Denerstein

Movie Habit

A pretentious, unpleasant, woolly headed movie that's nothing more than a cheesy horror picture for people who wouldn't be caught dead going to a cheesy horror picture.

April 10, 2012 Full Review | Comments (5)

Ken Hanke

Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Smug but fascinating: The movie is a woman's cry of anguish for an unjust world that enables men at all levels of age and power to get away with cruelty, brutality, murder and even war because, well, 'that's what boys DO.'

April 9, 2012 Full Review | Comment (1)

John Beifuss

Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

Swinton doesn't say much; she doesn't have to. Her tear-stained eyes and anguished face carry all her emotions. In a career filled with so many terrific, subtle performances, this is clearly one of her best.

April 4, 2012 Full Review

Michael Gallucci

Orlando Weekly

Rock Duer's a shoo-in if they ever make Satan: The Toddler Years and Jasper Newell manages to project an aura of pure evil even in pull-ups, but it's Ezra Miller as the adolescent Kevin who makes you believe you're in the presence of an American monster.

April 4, 2012 Full Review

Rick Kisonak

Film Threat

Of all the nomination flubs made this past January by the Academy of Harvey Weinstein Arts and Sciences, the most egregious mistake was arguably the lack of a Best Actress nod for Tilda Swinton.

March 23, 2012 Full Review | Comment (1)

Matt Brunson

Creative Loafing

Watching it isn't easy, but it is definitely worth having waited for.

March 22, 2012 Full Review

Shawn Levy

Oregonian

• 1. Kevin: Have I ever been?
  – Submitted by Iris J (5 months ago)
• 1. Eva: Two years. Plenty of time to think about it. I want you to tell me... why?
  2. Kevin: I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure.
  – Submitted by Joshua F (8 months ago)
• 1. Kevin: It's like this: you wake and watch TV, get in your car and listen to the radio you go to your little jobs or little school, but you don't hear about that on the 6 o'clock news, why? 'Cause nothing is really happening, and you go home and watch some more TV and maybe it's a fun night and you go out and watch a movie. I mean it's got so bad that half the people on TV, inside the TV, they're watching TV. What are these people watching, people like me?
  – Submitted by Cheyenne L (8 months ago)
• 1. Kevin: I am the context.
  – Submitted by Memo P (8 months ago)
• 1. Eva: Why would you have something like that?
  2. Kevin: I collect them.
  3. Eva: Isn't that a weird thing to collect?
  4. Kevin: Unlike stamps.
  5. Eva: Well, what's the point?
  6. Kevin: There is no point. That's the point.
  – Submitted by Bhavik M (11 months ago)
• 1. Eva: Why would you have something like that?
  2. Kevin: I collect them.
  3. Eva: Isn't that a weird thing to collect?
  4. Kevin: Unlike stamps.
  5. Eva: Well, what's the point?
  6. Franklin: There is no point. That's the point.
  – Submitted by Bhavik M (11 months ago)