Bad Seed - We Need To Talk About Kevin

4 out of 5 Popcorn Kernels

See Trailer Here

This is an examination of the psyche that I have not seen brought to the screen before. We Need to Talk about Kevin is a story involving a mother and a monster - the monster being her son - who ends up committing a horrible crime that effects a whole town, and how she becomes the martyr for his deeds.

The story is told in so many flashbacks/flash forwards/present day - that it reminded me of Michael Clayton in its chopped narrative, that serves as a way of presenting a story that all comes together in the end. This story is about a mother and her son, and the strange disconnected bond that they share. It is said that a mother knows her child, and in this one, we see that Kevin (Ezra Miller) was a handful from the start for his mother Eva (Tilda Swinton). At birth he came into the world screaming, and in one scene, we see Eva going to a busy and loud construction site with her crying child, only so she can get some peace. Then when she gets home and finally puts the child to bed, does the father Franklin (John C. Reilly) enter the home to come and play with the child, and to Eva's chagrin, Kevin is silent and cooing to him as if he were the perfect child. 


There is an obvious rivalry between Kevin and Eva, which is seen in Kevin's younger years with his resistance to potty training, ignores her, refuses to play, doesn't converse - until Franklin comes home, then he becomes a model son. These images are undercut with the tragedy the small town has encountered - as we witness Eva being punched in the face, ignored by her neighbors, propositioned by those she thinks she trusts, and confronted by Kevin's victims. Even when Kevin isn't there, his presence remains.

All In The Family

As Kevin reaches his adolescence, his plans become clear, and his personality becomes clever. He is very brash to Eva, and says and does things that would get him slapped in any other home. The reason Eva doesn't is because there is a deep love she has for him, and it is more in trying to understand how she has birthed such a monster, and she feels it is up to her to change him. But their personalities are so alike in some senses that she seems to have spawned an evil version of herself. They know how to push each others buttons, but Kevin knows how to push the buttons of others that are unaware that they are being pushed. When Eva has a second child, a girl named Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich), we believe that Kevin would have a sister/brother bonding - but this movie doesn't take that route. It goes off the Hollywood map of happy endings. Kevin isn't as hateful to his little sister, but his reaction to her is a hidden hate, where she is fooled into thinking he is the best thing since sliced bread.


Tilda as Eva is a deep rooted character, and her performance needs very little dialogue. The most speaking she does is when she is talking with Kevin, other times she is thinking about her time with him, wondering when she went wrong. She can't pull away from the fact that she needs to save him, even at the end of the movie she's still pulling straws. But within this silence, Tilda puts on a performance that is saturated in pain. Her eyes, her withdrawn body language, her speech, is all about shame. The town hates her, and she hates herself, but she can't seem to hate her son. This performance had me glued to the screen.


John C. Reilly is great here too, and his split reactions to his son and his wife show a versatility in his acting. He is like two different people. It seems that the whole family is caught in putting on a mask with one another. Until we reach a disturbing point in the movie when we discover at the same time Eva does, when she is running to the school where her son attends, that time has run out for her, for Kevin, for understanding him, for even the family. It is over.


But for the audience...it isn't, and We Need To Talk about Kevin, lingers on.