Rent We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
3.6 of 5 from 452 ratings
1h 47min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Eva (Swinton) puts her ambitions and career aside to give birth to Kevin, but the relationship between mother and son is difficult from the very first years. When Kevin is 15, he does something irrational and unforgivable in the eyes of the community, leaving Eva grappling with her own feelings of grief and responsibility. Did she ever love her son? And how much of what Kevin did was her fault?
- Actors:
- Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Rock Duer, Ashley Gerasimovich, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Alex Manette, Kenneth Franklin, Leslie Lyles, Paul Diomede, Michael Campbell, J. Mallory-McCree, Mark Elliot Wilson, James Chen, Lauren Fox, Blake DeLong, Andy Gershenzon, Kelly Wade, Ursula Parker
- Directors:
- Lynne Ramsay
- Producers:
- Jennifer Fox, Luc Roeg, Robert Salerno
- Writers:
- Lynne Ramsay, Rory Stewart Kinnear
- Studio:
- Artificial Eye Film Company Ltd.
- Genres:
- Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 2012, Award Winners, BAFTA Nominations Competition 2025, BAFTA Nominations Competition 2026, CinemaParadiso.co.uk Through Time, Films That Go Bump in the Night: Mischief Night, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Tilda Swinton, Holidays Film Collection, The Biggest Oscar Snubs: Part 2, The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Steven Soderbergh, Top 10 Autumn Films, Top 10 Award Winners at the London Film Festival, Top 10 Films About Letters, Top 10 Films With Voiceover Narration, Top Films
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 27/02/2012
- Run Time:
- 107 minutes
- Languages:
- English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles:
- English, English Hard of Hearing
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 2.35:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Cast and Crew Interviews
- Theatrical Trailer
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Reviews (8) of We Need to Talk About Kevin
Kevin - We Need to Talk About Kevin review by PH
The category 'really liked it' doesn't fit the experience. Awful but very good and stays in the memory, Excellent acting, particularly from 'Kevin'
1 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Disturbing, unsettling, haunting, creepy, harrowing - superb stuff - We Need to Talk About Kevin review by RP
Disturbing, unsettling, haunting, creepy, harrowing, superbly acted yet ultimately manipulative. I guess that describes both the destructive character of Kevin – and perhaps also the film. The story is told through the eyes of Kevin's mother, Eva Khatchadourian (superbly played by Tilda Swinton), formerly a successful travel writer but who can only find clerical work in a travel agency. Eva is hated and shunned by the community and it is clear that some terrible event has occurred. The grim story unfolds through flashbacks from before and after 'the incident'. Kevin's conception and birth has echoes of 'Rosemary's Baby' and Eva is ambivalent towards him, doesn't hold him close, doesn't bond with him, perhaps doesn't love him; in turn Kevin is rebellious and spiteful, even from a very early age. Is it nature or nurture? The only time he becomes animated is when read the story of Robin Hood, after which he becomes obsessed with archery... He sees his baby sister as a rival and treats her cruelly. Kevin is not your average nice boy. The film ends with Eva visiting Kevin in prison, ending on a nicely ambiguous note. This really is a superb film and while it has won many awards it missed out on the majors, and in my opinion (and of Dr Mark Kermode!) was cruelly overlooked for the Oscar nominations. Highly recommended – 5/5 stars.
1 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Red Flags - We Need to Talk About Kevin review by griggs
Lynne Ramsay is one of the finest directors working, so We Need to Talk About Kevin is a uniquely frustrating watch — like seeing a virtuoso trip over their own laces. Her fingerprints are everywhere: the inferential storytelling, the sensory detail, the obsessive use of red — tomato juice, paint, jam, blood — as a marker of Eva’s guilt and mental unravelling. It’s striking filmmaking in service of a script that too often lets her down.
The characters are oddly flat for material this rich. Tilda Swinton is quietly devastating once the world turns on Eva, but for long stretches she’s boxed in by the writing. John C. Reilly is so wilfully blind he becomes maddening, which may well be the point. Ezra Miller has little to work with as Kevin beyond a fixed sneer, so it’s hard to know where the writing stops and the performance starts.
The nature-versus-nurture question at the film’s core — is Kevin a monster, or is that simply how Eva sees him? — is either the film’s great strength or its neatest dodge. Ramsay refuses to settle it. Some will call that brave. Others will call it evasive. Either way, it’s worth seeing, and definitely worth arguing about.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Critic review
We Need to Talk About Kevin review by Alyse Garner - Cinema Paradiso
Based on the novel by Lionel Shriver Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk about Kevin is the painful and moving story of parents Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Franklin (John C. Reilly) whose son goes on a high school killing spree and their confused feelings of grief and guilt.
In many ways the movie seems far from the original American story in which Eva, a wife and mother, writes letters to her husband as the plot jumps back and forth in time. The movie continues to use the disjointed linear time frame, but does so in a very different yet equally effectively manner; manipulating the timeline has a very potent impact upon on the emotional structure of the movie: the linear manipulation helps to convey the pain and confusion felt by Kevin’s mourning parents.
Obviously this is not an easy film, with a rather risky subject and very complex emotions, yet the cast, particularly Swinton, really bring it to life with a genuine sense of humanity, pain and helplessness.
The first hour of the movie is daring and heartfelt, whilst the second half settles down somewhat, making the shifting emotions far easier to digest as an outsider. It remains a difficult film throughout however and is as such not a film one would describe as ‘enjoyable’. It is interesting and moving and even enlightening, yet the audience’s sense of relief when the credit’s finally role is palpable.
All in all, a very impressive movie that moves with an almost daring slowness and precision, very much worth seeing but certainly not for the faint hearted.