We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 186
Fresh: 141 | Rotten: 45
We Need to Talk About Kevin is a masterful blend of drama and horror, with fantastic performances across the board (Tilda Swinton especially, delivering one of her very best).
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 43
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 13
We Need to Talk About Kevin is a masterful blend of drama and horror, with fantastic performances across the board (Tilda Swinton especially, delivering one of her very best).
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 30,849
Movie Info
A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller, Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin explores the factious relationship between a mother and her son. Tilda Swinton, in a bracing, tour-de-force performance, plays the mother, Eva, as she contends for 15 years with the increasing malevolence of her first-born child, Kevin (Ezra Miller). Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, We Need to Talk About Kevin explores nature vs. nurture on a whole new level as Eva's own culpability is
Watch It Now
Cast
-
Tilda Swinton
Eva -
John C. Reilly
Franklin -
Ezra Miller
Kevin -
Ashley Gerasimovich
Celia -
Ursula Parker
Lucy -
Jasper Newell
Kevin (8 Years Old) -
Rocky Duer
Kevin (Toddler) -
Siobhan Fallon
Wanda
ADVERTISEMENT
We Need to Talk About Kevin Trailer & Photos
All Critics (187) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (141) | Rotten (45) | DVD (4)
It becomes a film about her [Swinton] scattered mind. That produces wonders from Swinton, but it ignores the plea in the title. What about Kevin? Kevin deserves so much more attention-indeed, he deserves being played by Tilda Swinton.
Top CriticFragmented, dreamlike, a whir of memories and misery, We Need to Talk About Kevin is unsettling, but also somehow unnecessary.
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" is confrontational cinema that will leave you speechless.
Director Ramsay makes Kevin's impact all the more felt by coming at it from all angles.
It's a hallmark of "Kevin's" emotional bravery and intellectual honesty that the questions haunt us long after the end credits roll.
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.
As a psychological study of a shattered mother struggling to make sense of a heinous crime carried out by her teenage son, it's endlessly fascinating.
A high school killing spree leads to a captivating examination of parenthood and the 'nature vs nurture' debate.
A real-world horror movie -- for parents.
It may not be a crowd-pleaser, but it's not every day we get an emotional powerhouse of a film done this well.
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a brooding, unnerving but wholly rewarding film.
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.
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.
One of the most chilling films of 2011
The best horror penetrates beyond external vibe to internal thought-process and the film never truly takes us within the mother's head.
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.
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.
Irony clashes with disturbing drama
A powerful look inside a mother's torment
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
Watching it isn't easy, but it is definitely worth having waited for.
Audience Reviews for We Need to Talk About Kevin
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
-
- Eva: Why?
- Kevin: I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure.
-
- Kevin: Have I ever been?
-
- Eva: Two years. Plenty of time to think about it. I want you to tell me... why?
- Kevin: I used to think I knew. Now I'm not so sure.
-
- 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?
-
- Kevin: I am the context.
-
- Eva: Why would you have something like that?
- Kevin: I collect them.
- Eva: Isn't that a weird thing to collect?
- Kevin: Unlike stamps.
- Eva: Well, what's the point?
- Kevin: There is no point. That's the point.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Kevin's punishment | 9 months ago | 2 |
| Movie | 7 months ago | 1 |
What's Hot On RT
New Desolation of Smaug trailer!
Naomi Watts is Princess Di
The Hangover 3, The Purge, and More
Trailer for a squirrely heist flick
See what's on TV tonight
Latest News on We Need to Talk About Kevin
December 8, 2011:
Critics Consensus: New Year's Eve Drops the BallThis week at the movies, we've got a star-studded celebration (New Year's Eve, starring Hilary Swank...
Fresh Links
Featured
Halloween Movies For Wimps
Scary movies too scary for you? Here are some alternatives for October 31st.
10 Best Superhero TV Shows
HitFix combs through TV history to compile a superpowered list.
Ridiculous Movie Mistakes
RollingStone proves even the best movies miss a details here and there.
Deadly Movie Kids
Moviefone lists 11 Movie Kids Who Could Kick Our Asses.
50 States, 50 Movies
For July 4th, TimeOut has compiled 50 state-specific movie choices.
Promos
Follow RT on Twitter!
Spice up your feed with hourly Tomatometer updates!
Featured on RT
- Primetime Preview: Supernatural, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and More 0
- RT on DVD & Blu-Ray: The Hangover Part III, The Purge, and More 11
- Primetime Preview: Beauty and the Beast, Sleepy Hollow and More 0
- NYFF: Joaquin Phoenix and James Gray talk The Immigrant 2
- Box Office Guru Wrapup: Gravity Stuns with Record $55M Launch 80
- Primetime Preview: Witches of East End, Once Upon a Time and More 4
- Weekly Ketchup: Disney Plans Live Action Cruella de Vil Movie 37
Top Headlines
-
Fox Animated Series, ABC Comedies Tumble in Sunday Ratings
0
-
Bong Joon-ho Reportedly "Furious" About Snowpiercer Cuts
0
-
Record-Setting Number of Films Competing in Foreign-Language Oscar Race
0
-
Woody Allen Cancels Blue Jasmine's India Premiere
1
-
Lionsgate Wants Gary Ross and Jennifer Lawrence's Burial Rites
1
-
ABC Plans Kevin Hart-Inspired Series
0
-
The Shining's Danny Torrance Is All Grown Up
1
Foreign Titles
- Tenemos que hablar de Kevin (ES)
