We Need To Talk About Kevin - A movie review

Film cover

Kevin's mother struggles to love her strange child, despite the increasingly vicious things he says and does as he grows up. But Kevin is just getting started, and his final act will be beyond anything anyone imagined.

"Hey want to watch a movie?"

The next thing I know I'm sat watching this film that completely blows me away. I had heard 'We need to talk about Kevin' a few years ago when looking up Ezra Miller and some of his other acting roles but like with a lot of things never found the time to watch it.

The film flips between the past and present showing the striking contrasts between the lives of Kevin and his mother after 'the crime'. You quickly realise what Kevin's crime is but don't see the full effect of it until the very end. However, the film did allude to his crime through the use of red imagery through food especially. With so much red you knew there had to be blood shed and lots of it.

Something that I think is very important is that it made us think and discuss it's content. My friend and I were discussing it days after we had seen it as the story had stuck with us. We spent a lot of time questioning the actions of a lot of the characters. For instance, how could Kevin from such a young age know how to manipulate his own parents. Why did Kevin's mother stay in town where everyone hated it and more importantly still why did everyone hate Kevin's mother for the crimes her son committed? We did not see the actions of her son as her fault. However other people may think differently and I think that the film puts forward a good discussion point about society and how tragedies affect us. A person who fell victim to Kevin will blame his mother for not raising him better where as myself, not having been involved in the event, pitied his mother and what her life had become.

I've briefly seen a few other reviews and found some people were bored or annoyed by this film but that's the wonderful thing about people - we all like different things! The most common thing I've seen that people disliked was the time jumping between present and past but I personally liked it and thought it added something to the film. It refused to give you the whole story and made you desperate to see more to know what happened.

Just so you know the film is adapted from the book of the same name by Lionel Shriver which I have not read but will be planning on doing so to see how the film compares.

I personally urge you to watch this film as I don't think you will regret it!

Sophie