We Need to Talk About Kevin

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

(R)

***

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Lynne Ramsay’s potent new film plays off “every parent’s nightmare”: What if a child of mine turns out wrong? said A.O. Scott in The New York Times. Though the film tracks backward from a Columbine-style shooting to follow the killer’s upbringing, it’s “less a psychological or sociological case study than a horror movie.” Tilda Swinton is terrific as a mother who resented parenthood almost from the start and is forced to consider whether her choices along the way caused her son to erupt, said Stephanie Zacharek in Movieline.com. “Her emotional nakedness, her desire to do the right thing by her son, even as he saps her dry, are believable every minute.” Early on, Ramsay deliberately disorients the viewer, cutting back and forth between the aftermath of the crime and the events leading up to it, said Mary Pols in Time. The effect contributes to the nightmare atmosphere, but when the subject “is something as elemental and visceral as motherhood,” an emphasis on mood and aesthetics feels like the wrong choice. “A movie can be too arty.”