We Need to Talk About Kevin 2011

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine: We Need To Talk About Kevin doesn't just bring you to the outskirts of a parent's worst nightmare; this fever dream of guilt and loss takes you straight inside. Read more

Jake Coyle, Associated Press: This thoroughly well-crafted, if rigidly conceived film could use a little more talking -- at least some therapy! -- about Kevin. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: View more MSN videosGo to MSN Video One of the most relentlessly and purposefully harrowing movies of the year... Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Ms. Ramsay, with ruthless ingenuity, creates a deeper dread and a more acute feeling of anticipation by allowing us to think we know what is coming and then shocking us with the extent of our ignorance. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Were it not for Swinton's magnetism, it would be unbearable. Instead, you'll want to stay for the wallop. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Ramsay, filming in lurid reds and unblinking close-ups, lets no one off the hook here; this is truly a domestic horror story, with no easy answers and nobody blameless. Read more

Noel Murray, AV Club: In her first movie since 2002's magnificent Morvern Callar, Ramsay continues her fascination with textures, at times reducing her lead character's world to impressionistic fragments: her hands, a wall, splashes of paint, et cetera. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Swinton is astounding. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: 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. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The boy (played by a trio of child actors) is so unremittingly evil that the movie begins to feel like a grotesque remake of that old John Ritter comedy Problem Child. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It's a creepy and disturbing movie, but there's not a lot going on behind people's eyes. The soullessness lacks soul. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Director Ramsay makes Kevin's impact all the more felt by coming at it from all angles. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The movie is creepy, but it has no texture or depth. It's like The Omen directed by Miranda July. Read more

Laremy Legel, Film.com: Part horror, part drama, part cautionary tale, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a film that will lodge in your memory long after the end credits. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: This is, in a way, a real horror film about everyday things and a disconnected family. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It's a domestic horror story that literally gets to us where we live, a disturbing tale told with uncompromising emotionality and great skill by filmmaker Lynne Ramsay. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Tilda Swinton is the star of We Need to Talk About Kevin, and her performance is so complex and volcanic and transfixing that all of the film's flaws melt away. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: 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. Read more

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

Richard Brody, New Yorker: The actors are uniformly skillful (and Reilly's voice is one of the current cinema's charms), but Ramsay gives them little but prefabricated attitudes to work with. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: It's a gripping, grueling movie, but is it one most American parents will want to watch? Probably not, and I can't blame them. But is it one many American parents should see? Absolutely. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: The film's bluntness doesn't diminish the power of the nature-versus-nurture questions Eva's asking herself. Or of Swinton's harrowing portrait of parental guilt. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: "We Need to Talk About Kevin" isn't afraid of the conversation, no matter how painful. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Swinton and Reilly make no sense as a couple, which is all of a piece with "We Need To Talk About Kevin,'' where everyone's motivations manage to seem simultaneously arbitrary and inevitable pretty much all the time. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: A morbid, misguided mess with a fractured narrative, guaranteed to drive audiences away in droves. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Fragmented, dreamlike, a whir of memories and misery, We Need to Talk About Kevin is unsettling, but also somehow unnecessary. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: This is a depressing motion picture, yet the issues it addresses are real, especially in a world where the term "childhood innocence" is losing all meaning. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Nothing seared my consciousness like the stunning work from Tilda Swinton in "We Need to Talk About Kevin." Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: That the film works so brilliantly is a tribute in large part to the actors. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Acting doesn't get much better than the subtly brilliant display put on by Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: There are so many great things happening on almost every level of this movie, from Swinton's haunting, magnetic and tremendously vulnerable performance... Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The narrative strategy amounts to little more than film-school strenuousness, and in the end it can't conceal the movie's essential crudeness - its coarse, artless dialogue, blank character writing and intellectual vacuity. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Even in the film's weaker stretches, the fierce presence of Tilda Swinton made it impossible to tear my eyes away. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: It's a hallmark of "Kevin's" emotional bravery and intellectual honesty that the questions haunt us long after the end credits roll. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "We Need to Talk About Kevin" is confrontational cinema that will leave you speechless. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, The Atlantic: Kevin is an extraordinary work from Ramsay, a filmmaker with an uncommon gift for getting at the inner psychology of her characters through striking visuals. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Ezra Miller's sneering, absurdly precocious evil-child performance makes him just another bad-seed horror villain. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: When Ramsay bombards us with editing tricks and an excess of visual style, it feels like dazzle camouflage designed to cover up the fact that she ultimately doesn't seem to have much to say on the subject. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' is thought-provoking, confident and fearless. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: There's no equivocating ... over the excellence of the acting by Swinton and casting find Ezra Miller Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: It's an arty horror movie set within the context of a dysfunctional family, focusing on the massively strained relationship between a conflicted mother and a sociopathic son. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: Present in every scene so that there's no doubt that her character's consciousness is filtering what's seen, Swinton delivers a concrete-hard central perf that's up there with her best work. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: By treating Kevin's evil as a mystery to be solved, Ramsay only succeeds in making what was once allusive banal. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: 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. Read more