We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

The movie opens with a cheerleaders in the background heard through a very large open window, cheering “Go! Fight! Win!”. Cut to a mass of people covered in red, screaming at one another. They are throwing tomatoes are each other in the annual tomato fight in Spain. This is where we meet our mom, Eva, for the first time. As she is being splashed with tomato juice, a woman in the background yells that someone stole her baby and she needs helping finding it. Eva wakes up with a red light shining on her face. Someone has taken red paint and splattered her house with it. The house is dirty and small and looks like a depression safe haven.   Cut to Eva splashing water on her face and we see her husband and daughter for the first time. Celia wears an eye patch. Kevin comes to the kitchen and before school and tells his dad he is not hungry for breakfast with a very focused look in his eyes. Cut back to Eva seen leaving the small dirty house in funeral attire. There is a small child standing by her car, bouncing a basketball. Because her car had been splattered with the paint, she wipes off the paint from the windshield the best she can and drives off. She enters an office titled Travels R Us and waits with her sunglasses on in the lobby for someone to help her. She remembers a day in which she had to leave her previous job for an emergency in the middle of the day with everyone staring at her. When she snaps back to reality, she sits across from a woman with horrible lipstick and curly hair that gives her a job. Leaving, feeling good, she encounters two women that proceed to punch her in the face and tell her to “rot in hell, you fucking bitch.”   We see a short blip of her showing up to her son’s school at night with other parents, presumably there has been an accident. She looks horrified. Cut back to Eva at the small house, she lays in bed and remembers happy memories of her and her husband before they had kids. During this trip down memory lane, Franklin’s voice can be heard telling Eva how much he loves her and how he never wants her to leave again and talking about Eva during her first pregnancy. She looks miserable and her husband looks so happy. After Eva leaves work, she drives and thinks about the night at the school that the incident happened. She had left work early so that she could go and visit her son. Cut to a pregnant Eva at a le mas class looking around the room and leaving early because all of the other moms looked so happy and she clearly is not. At the prison, she sits across from Kevin and Kevin bites his fingernails and places them on the table. Whether or not they speak, we cannot be too sure. as she leaves the prison, we cut to Eva giving birth to her son. The doctors are telling her to stop resisting the baby coming out. She looks defeated, her husband looks thrilled.   At the small house, Eva is sanding off the red pant. In another memory, we see Eva struggling to get Kevin to stop crying. She holds him, takes him for a walk in a stroller, and finds some comfort in the sound of a jackhammer on the street that drowns out the sound of Kevin’s crying. When she finally gets him to stop crying and can sleep for a few minutes, Franklin comes in and picks up Kevin, despite what Eva says. He keeps telling Eva that all she has to do is rock him a little bit and he will be fine. while she is sanding her house, the neighbor stops to stare at her and then continues to mow his lawn when she looks back. At the grocery store, Eva suddenly hides from a woman she sees and ends up seeing her while checking out. She buys 12 eggs, all broken, just to leave the store. We see then that the woman had lost her daughter during the incident at the school.   At home, Eva eats eggs with shell pieces in them and we see Eva trying to get toddler age Kevin to talk to her and play with a ball with her. He looks at her with pure evil, even as a toddler. She takes him to a doctor to get his ears and hearing checked because she said he screamed so much as a baby she thought it might have damaged his hearing. The doctor tells her not to worry too much. Eventually he does roll the ball back to her, but only once. We see a quick cut to her visitation with Kevin where they do not even look at each other and sit in silence. When toddler Kevin does decide to talk, he only tells his mom “no” when she asks for him to say “mommy”. When Eva leaves work that night to drive home, it is Halloween and there are kids dressed up running into the street, making her incredibly nervous. She immediately chugs wine when she gets home. Some kids inevitably come to her door for candy and shout “Candy! KK!” which are Kevin’s initials. She quickly turns off all the lights and crouches by the front door with her ears covered. Cut to Eva talking to toddler Kevin about how she was very happy before he came along and about how every morning she wakes up and wishes she was in France. Franklin sees this and just leaves the house. This is all being interspersed with clips of Kevin throwing his meals against the kitchen fridge.   When Franklin tries to talk to Eva about leaving the city and moving into a house, she is upset and says she is not going to leave the city while Kevin ruins an entire plate of food by pouring an entire bottle of salt on it. they do end up moving because again, Franklin does not really seem to care what Eva wants. Back at the office, Eva leaves to go grab a sandwich for lunch and runs into a young man in a wheelchair named Soweto who asks how she is doing and tells her that there is a chance he may walk again. She remembers him getting carried out on a gurney from the school. She scrubs the paint off the porch at home and finally makes some progress. Back when Kevin was a toddler, he played video games with his dad while Eva finds old travel documents and maps from before Kevin. She ends up hanging up all of the maps on the walls and making them into a wallpaper. Toddler Kevin makes sure to let her know that the maps are stupid and that he hates them. Eva leaves to go answer a phone call and Kevin takes this opportunity to take a water gun and fill it with paint and spray the entire room with paint on all of the maps. She takes the water gun and stops it to pieces, with red paint all over her shoes. That night, she drinks wine on the couch while Franklin tells Eva that Kevin is really sorry and that Kevin was only trying to make the room special. Why do men do this? Do they always feel the need to make us feel like we are going crazy?   Then, while doing some counting exercises, Kevin counts from 1-50 just to make the stupid questions stop. So she gives him a complex addition problem on a piece of paper and Kevin crumples it up and then shits himself. He is WAY too old to be wearing diapers. She changes him and he stands up does it again immediately after just to spite her. She throws him against a wall and breaks his arm. On the way home from the hospital, she tells Kevin how sorry she is. He never shows any emotions. He runs up the stairs to the house and tells Franklin that he fell off the changing table when mom went to get wipes and broke his arm. Franklin buys it. Later that night, Kevin pees in the bathroom like a child his age should be doing. Both parents are completely shocked because they didn’t know he knew how to do that. When Eva goes upstairs to tell him goodnight, she says she loves him and Kevin does not reciprocate.   Not sure how long later, but when Kevin’s arm is no longer broken at least, he tells his mom to turn off the music in the car because he doesn’t like it. he tells her he wants to go home when she asks to go to the store and he scratches the scar on his arm and she is reminded of what happened and agrees to go home. But at home, he takes a piece of bread with jelly on it and smashes it against the glass coffee table. He immediately stands up and puts on a happy face and greets dad at the door while Eva stares at the coffee table. Franklin tells her that he is just a boy and she leaves the bread there so long that it gets ants. A few months later, Eva is very very clearly pregnant again and Kevin makes a comment that she is fat. Franklin gets mad at her and asks her why is only a part of the decision “now”. This makes no fucking sense to me. “Now”? how about when you were making the baby? Hmm?   Eva tells Kevin very gently about the birds and bees and Kevin just plainly asks if this conversation is about fucking. He says he doesn’t want anyone new in the house and Eva says he will get used to it. he tells Eva that she is used to him too but she still doesn’t like him, all while breaking all of his crayons in half. At the hospital after she gives birth to her daughter, Celia, Kevin reaches into a water pitcher and splashes baby Celia on her head like a christening. While walking at night, Present Eva remembers Franklin telling her that a lot of kids have issues with potty training and that she chooses to see it as a personal vendetta and that this is not good for him. Past Eva finds Kevin on his stomach on the landing of the stairs and carries him back to his room. He had thrown up on his rug and she cleans it up and tells him not to be sorry for it. she hangs out with him and reads him a book before bed and he actually cuddles her and wants a kiss from her.   Present Eva is painting her walls blue when two missionaries come up to her door and ask her where she is going to be spending her afterlife. She says yes that she is going to hell. Past Eva tries to get Kevin dressed the next morning and he tells her he can do it himself. Franklin super dad gets Kevin a toy bow and arrow set where the arrows have suction cups on the ends. He shoots one at the target and one at mom’s face in the kitchen window. Present Eva gets herself enthralled in a TV interview where Kevin is talking about how people watch tv a lot (I get lost in his rant here). Past Eva finds Celia wrapped up in tinsel telling her about how her and now teenage Kevin were playing Christmas kidnapping. Then Kevin proceeds to take a vacuum hose and suck up Celia’s hair in it before dad comes home with a Christmas tree. Later, Eva finds Kevin masturbating with his bedroom door open and she slams it in a fury.   At this office Christmas party, Present Eva gets asked to dance by this guy in the office that has been helping her use the computer and she says no politely. He whispers to her “Where do you get off you stuck up bitch? Do you think anyone else is going to want you now?” Okay seriously, I really need someone to explain this to me. Why do men do this? Is this tactic supposed to make me excited and enthusiastic to dance with you? Truly, I am baffled. She obviously she leaves. Past Eva is walking down the street with Celia when they see Kevin looking in the window at a large poster of Eva’s book. In the kitchen, Eva asks him if she saw him at the bookstore and he says no. she asks him if she can take him to go play a round of mini golf and he agrees. At the mini golf course, she makes comments about how she always sees fat people eating and Kevin tells her that she is harsh. He wins the mini golf game and they go home to change for dinner because they got rained on and at home, Kevin eats half a chicken off the bone. He proceeds to not eat at dinner and insult his mother by telling her that throughout the dinner she will start to talk about sex and drugs and about how much she likes to spend time with him. Later, she goes into his room to snoop while he is at school and finds a disc that says “I Love You” on it. she takes it and puts it in her computer and it puts some type of virus on it. She has Kevin fix it for her and he tells her that he collects the virus things because he doesn’t like stamps.   For Christmas, Present Eva calls her mom and eats a sandwich alone at the table. Past Eva is opening presents on Christmas morning with the kiddos. Teen Kevin gets a huge bow like an actual one now and Celia gets a hamster. The hamster gets lost and Celia says its her fault because she left the door open and she is stupid like Kevin says she is. Her and Franklin look for the hamster and don’t find it, so Eva tells Celia that the hamster went to live outside in the garden. Then, while talking to Celia, the sink gets backed up and she knows that the hamster is in the drain. She makes eye contact with Kevin through the kitchen window while he is playing tetherball with dad. She gets out some drain clearing up liquid like Drano and pours it in the sink. Then, we see Eva washing her hands that have blood all over them and right after we see her sitting on the couch at the hospital with Franklin. He asks her why she left the cleaning supplies out and she says she didn’t. He asks her how they got out then and she says that Kevin did it, so then Franklin tells her she needs psychiatric help and leaves her.   Present Eva is back at the prison to visit Kevin. Past Eva eats dinner with Kevin and Franklin. Eva tells Kevin that she is thankful that he called the ambulance and was worried that he might have been responsible for the incident with the cleaning supplies because he was supposed to be watching Celia. She gets up from the table when Franklin tells Kevin that he just doesn’t want him to blame himself. She goes on to clean Celia’s eye and put on fresh bandages. Kevin wants to go outside and practice with his new bow and asks Celia if she wants to go collect arrows for him. Eva tells him no and Franklin gets pissed and leaves the room. That night, Franklin and Eva talk about divorce timelines. Kevin overhears part of the conversation and Franklin explains that it is likely out of context. Kevin explains that he knows that he is the context. Present Eva is cleaning the paint off of her windows with a razor blade.   Past Eva answers the door to receive a package for Kevin that is abnormally heavy. He opens the box and finds like 10 bike locks. Eva asks why because he never rides his bike. He says he got them for cheap online and is going to sell them at school to make a profit. Franklin praises him for his entrepreneurial spirit. Present Eva is washing her hands. Past Eva is watching Franklin play with Celia like we saw in the very beginning of the movie. At the kitchen counter, Eva checks Kevin’s temperature by touching his forehead and asks if feels okay. He says “never better”. Then she asks what he wants to do for his 16th birthday coming up. He says he “might be tied up”. While Eva is at work, a woman comes in her office and asks if Kevin goes to Gladstone High School. At the school, Kevin has taken all of the bike locks he purchased and locked all of the doors to the gymnasium. Eva arrives at the school to see firemen sawing the locks off of the exterior doors while parents wait for their children to see if they are alive. Kevin walks out of the gym doors with his hands raised and drops to the ground for police. You see, Kevin locked all of the doors and used his bow and arrow to murder his fellow high school students.   Eva goes home that night to find her house completely empty, with Franklin and Celia dead in the yard, also victims of Kevin. Kevin is shown at his high school gym relishing in his God-like status. Eva lays in her bed with her blood soaked clothes. Present Eva wears Franklin’s t shirt and smells it lovingly. She has a room set up for Kevin for when he is released. Her house is finally clear of all red paint and she gets in the car to visit Kevin again. She tells him he does not look happy. He is almost 18, so he will be going to the big dog prison now. She says that she just wants him to tell her why he did it. he said that he used to think he knew, but now he is not so sure. She gives him a hug and looks completely cold and detached by it. The film ends with Eva walking out of the prison for the last time.   To start off our “what does it all mean” portion, I just cannot even dive into anything else without talking about how this has to be any mother’s worst nightmare. That their son can carry such an act of pure evil. What makes Kevin’s act particularly evil is the fact that there is no true motivation for the act. We do not see that he has been getting bullied at school or that there is any particular reason he would carry out such an act against his classmates at school except for the infliction of pain and harm and carnage. Which leads us to ask, is this Eva’s fault? Is Kevin’s desire to inflict pain based on his upbringing? I suppose I am more so wondering if this a nature vs nurture situation.   I have seen this movie twice now and I didn’t realize until I read a FirstPost article that I have linked below is when I found that Eva is on trial for parental negligence. Obviously this makes sense because of what Kevin has done as a minor under Eva’s supervision. This movie is actually based on a book of the same name written by Lionel Shriver, which a Eva is communicating with Franklin through a series of letters. In the movie, we are shown Eva living her life after the loss of her family being reminded of her life in a very convenient order of before Kevin was born all the way up to the incident. She is being triggered by every day life tasks of her raising Kevin. And Kevin was truly a nightmare of a child. We can make the assumption that Eva simply did not want a child, point blank, period. But she chose to have one anyway, thinking it was her own fault and her own self that was the one with the problem. Her husband was over the moon happy and she likely felt like she would be happier once the baby arrived. As women, we put this expectation on ourselves that we have to be excited to be pregnant and be excited to be a mother later. And nothing makes me more mad than when I tell someone that I don’t want kids, and they look at me and tell me that I will change my mind. I am currently 25. Don’t you think that I would have at the very least started to consider the idea of having kids by now?   I still want absolutely nothing to do with it. I cannot even fathom the idea of sacrificing my time and my energy and my money and my freedom for a child. And I have talked to many people about the idea of birthing a child and looking at it at the hospital and not liking it or immediately loving it. I have been dismissed and told that that is not necessarily possible and that I would of course immediately look at my child and love it. But guess what? That is not always true. And that is why this movie hits home for me so hard. Eva is literally shown in the hospital after giving birth to Kevin staring blankly at the wall while her husband holds the baby. She did not bond with her baby, whether she was capable of it or not I don’t know. But some women do not and can not bond with their baby, and that is a very real reality that I wish people would at the very least acknowledge.   So that brings me to my main question of is this a case of nurture or nature? I cannot really be sure. I certainly think that Eva thinks that this is a result of nurture, just by the way that she is treating herself and putting herself through the torture of trying to find and think back to key details of Kevin’s upbringing. She is blaming herself, so I think that Eva’s character thinks that Kevin’s actions are a result of her. And other people in the community believe it is her fault too. The woman that hit Eva in the face randomly, the way that people look at her with absolutely horror when she is in the grocery store, the way that her home gets vandalized with red paint. Everyone blames her.   But at the same time, her own husband wouldn’t even listen to her when she told him time and time again about Kevin. And it is for this very reason that I don’t believe that this is a case of nurture. This is a case of nature. From the day he was born, Kevin hated his mother.  SOURCES First Post Article: https://www.firstpost.com/art-and-culture/as-we-need-to-talk-about-kevin-turns-10-a-look-at-what-made-it-such-a-haunting-meditation-on-motherhood-9610741.html Good Reads Forum: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/588-sick-or-evil-nature-or-nurture IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/