We Need To Talk About Kevin - film review

Perhaps unfairly I watched We Need To Talk About Kevin a month ago, absorbed it’s artistic darkness and obscurities, took it back to the video library and forgot about it. Yesterday I flipped open my laptop and started writing a review. I’m not sure whether taking that amount of time to come to a decision about a movie is wise, but it seems to have taken that long for my thoughts on the matter to finally become clear.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film about a mother trawling through her own biased and subjective memory to find an answer to why her first born child has grown up to be a mass murderer. We only see her side of the story and her take on events, therefore it seems that the film isn’t here to give it’s audience a balanced opinion, it’s here to be un-diplomatic, narrow minded and short sighted, just like many of it’s characters.

As a drama about an American high school shooting (this time with arrows instead of bullets… as if teenagers being brutally gunned down has become some sort of cinematic cliché) it’s not as haunting, mature or disturbing as Gus Van Sant’s 2003 film Elephant – which left me numb for days – and struggles to get to grips with what story it’s actually trying to tell. If it’s about a psychotic child/young man growing up to commit an unforgivable atrocity then it’s portrayal of the titular Kevin as an Omen style demon child, complete with high-angle shots of his dark and evil gazes, is ill conceived and borders on comical; if it’s about a woman being victimised by the tragedy’s survivors for bringing the perpetrator into the world then, once you see the key series of events from start to finish and realise that she’s just as much of a victim as the rest, you start to question why she’s so hated by the community; if it’s about a mother trying to work out where she went wrong with bringing up her offspring then there are great gaps in the film’s narrative that can only be described as plot holes which fail to explain important issues that desperately need explaining.

In the end We Need To Talk About Kevin is surprisingly mundane and, dare I say it, rather boring. We know what the film is inevitably building up to and what our thoughts/feelings are on the subject already, but in carefully structuring a narrative around these known quantities the filmmakers have steered clear of providing any answers, clear or otherwise, on the reasoning behind Kevin’s actions; it also refuses to find a satisfying emotional denouement which we mistakenly think this is all leading us to. In the end the film remains a nicely shot, elegantly arranged but slightly exploitative bore that tries to be deeper and more challenging than it actually is.

I recommend watching the aforementioned Elephant instead, or maybe even the more popcorn friendly The Omen, you’ll have a similar but more truthful and complete experience than if you try labouring through the tedium of We Need To Talk About Kevin, which simply has nothing to say.

2/5