We Need To Talk About Kevin- thoughts and review(kinda)

I rewatched this movie a little while ago, and I thought I would leave a little review/ my thoughts on it kind of thing. It’s not going to be like one of my more ‘professional’ reviews, as I don’t actually know what I really am going to say throughout this, as its more like me saying what comes to mind as I write this.

Starting off, I wan to say that I really liked this movie. I think it is a good movie, it’s shot well, the acting is good, and the story is engaging throughout. I really liked how the story is told and that brings me to the main thing that has been on my mind. I think that Eva is a neglectful parent, and the story is told from her unreliable perspective. 

How she acts right after Kevin is born seems to be some sort of postpartum mental health issues, leading her to be so deeply disconnected from Kevin.  A lot of Kevin’s early childhood interactions with Eva seems to be some sort of attention seeking behavior, with Eva taking as a direct attempt to get on her bad side. I think this because of her immediate disconnect with Kevin, Kevin’s behavior with the father, and Eva’s annoyance with how much more behaved she thinks Kevin to be with the father. When Kevin cries as an infant, only to stop once the father has him, I think is just how Eva sees the event to have happened, as the story is shown from her recollection of what happened. I think that Kevin was put as ease by the Father as he put in the effort to ask him. When Kevin is older and acting out, like a lot of kids to. I believe that it is because he wants for his mother to pay him as much attention as his father does. Eva straight up tells Kevin that she was happy before Kevin was born, saying that she wishes she was in France instead of being a mother to him. This could be seen as a reaction to Kevin’s behavior, but seeing as she was like this before Kevin could even begin to act out, I’d say that this adds on to the idea of her being emotionally neglectful and distant from her son.

Eva likes to think that she put in the attention that Kevin wanted, but I think she did it without actual connection to him, something that Kevin could sense and understand to a certain extend, which lead to him starting to be the one to put in the effort, like in the playroom scene. I think he topped trying after the time sh threw him, after he made a mess of himself, to clearly get her time and attention, even if negative. This is where I think Kevin started to grow into a bad person, as though Eva is at fault for some things, Kevin grows to do a lot of bad things on his own volition.

Once Eva falls pregnant with their second child, Kevin begins to try and get Eva’s attention again. I think that this is because he understands that the new baby will get all of he attention that he wants from Eva as he didn’t get it, and maybe he is afraid that she will like the baby for than him, which turns out to be true. I think Kevin had an early onset of some sort of personality or mood disorder, either from the emotional neglect or genetics, probably coming from Eva’s side of the family.

There is a time jump, where we don’t see much of the daughter as a baby and Kevin’s reaction to it. It goes right int Kevin’s teen years and the daughter, Celia, being grade school age. So we don’t see how different it was with Kevin and the daughter’s raising.

Kevin seems to have stopped caring about earning his mother’s affection at this point, if we follow the believe that the story is told from an unreliable standpoint, with him being actively antagonistic towards Eva. His personality/ mood disorder seems to be getting worse as will, with moments of him expressing abnormal sexuality, asking it with no care about how it’s perceived by other, including his mother, and violent tendencies, when supposedly killing Celia’s hamster. In the dinner scene, Kevin makes it known to Eva that he knows and doesn’t care about the fact that she doesn’t really care from him, but does out of obligation, as she’s his mother. This pushes Eva away even farther as she seems to take this as an excuse to quit trying to act as if she cares for Kevin. Around this time, Kevin takes an interest in archery, as Eva read him a story about Robin Hood. This connects to his final big outburst, as he uses a weapon from the only story we see Eva tell him, which she told in the only moment we see her show an ounce of care for him, a he had fallen ill.

The moment that made me think that instead of Kevin just being an evil person, but a neglected child was when Celia having to go to the hospital for her eye to be taken care of. Her eye was exposed to drain cleaner while in Kevin’s care and he is blamed for this, when it is the parents fault, with the father accepting this. Eva, however, makes it seem as if it was all Kevin’s doing and like he forcefully put the cleaner in her eye, hen this information is not told to the audience or seen by her, she just assumes that’s what happened due to her preconceived notion of Kevin’s mindset and behavior. Eva and her husband left their two children alone together, but blames the elders son for something going wrong when a plethora of things could have happened, especially considering the age gap between the kids. Kevin may have just been minding his own business while Celia was off doing something else, happening across the cleaner. This isn’t to excuse Kevin of guilt entirely, as he is still the older sibling, but considering how Eva thinks Kevin is in his nature, it was wrong and neglectful of her to leave Celia with a person who she deemed to be unstable and dangerous.

All of this finally ends with Kevin killing the kids at his school, something that was foreshadowed throughout the movie. I think that if Eva had put in some more attention to Kevin, perhaps intervening once she believed that Kevin was a dangerous person, it would not have happened. I think that Kevin was a mentally sick kid, and would have continued to have violent thoughts even if Eva was emotionally connected with him, but if she were, she would have been in a position to care about the mental health of her son and try to get him assistance. But seeing as she checked out of their dynamic not too long after he was born, she effectively made it so that Kevin wouldn’t be stopped when he inevitably got too violent.

I think that her neglect, partnered with Kevin’s underlying mental illnesses, led to the killing of her family and the children at Kevin’s school. The movie tries to set it up as this sort of unbiased reltelling of events, but it’s still being told from the perspective of the only person to survive the event, Eva. The mother that didn’t care for her son enough to see the signs of his unwell mind.

That’s all I have to say. If you think something different about the movie, drop a comment and we can discuss it, as I love talking about movies that grab my attention and can make me think a littl bit about how its being told or what its truly about. Also feel free to give me suggestions, whether it be just to watch or to ask about on her if you want to hear what I think on it.

Judah OUT!