Idk where i read this but i do know tilda stated that there was a deleted scene on the movie where she asks kevin why he didnt kill her, to which he responds "you dont want to kill your audience"

For those who have seen the movie. Notice how the mother is blamed for her child's crime but the father was the one who played violent video games with him, didn't listen to his wife when she'd try and tell him there was something "off" with Kevin, and he bought him that bow and arrow... Which he used to kill people.

kevin is an 'exaggerated' version of eva. there might be resemblance between them and the way their bonding was made? it's not normal. they understood each other better. and kevin felt no need to put on his mask while his mother's around (which his dad has failed to see)

He's beautiful

I wonder if Tilda gave the "he was a hell child" explanation and Ezra gave the "she was a terrible mother" explanation (essentially their characters' opinions in the matter) on purpose or if they were just that in tune with their characters

Kevin said that "There's no point, that's the point."

The person who played Kevin is absolutely Gorgeous

A valid point. She shows normal motherly affection to the second child, the planned one.

I'm going to start saying that the mother DID love him, you may say she didn't but here's my humble opinion: Kevin really was a sociopath, he really did all those things on purpose, to those who say that the mother and him didn't have a 'bond' they did, think about all these things he did and how your mother would react? she really cared about him, otherwise she just could've disappeared, abandoned him or don't do anything for him. instead she tried really hard to please him, to help him, but he just didn't care. Tilda is my fucking hero, this woman is beyond any actress on earth.

Fantastic film. Really gets under your skin. And Tilda Swinton is absolutly brilliant in this.

I don't think Ezra's point of view was wrong at all... The human mind is not simple. His behavior was a combination of his mental condition and the broken family he was born in... For a child like Kevin, the mother's intentions don't matter, the only thing he experiences is the lack of love from his mother. She wants to care about him, and tries it multiple times, but when she fails she reaally harms him. All the events in Kevin's life lead him to turn into a psycho, not only his relationship with his mother.

I can't think of a single movie that disturbed me more. And I've seen requiem for a dream. This was very well done and a movie every mother in this generation should see.

While Kevin is the big unknow, the real protagonista is his mother... This is really a great movie and I understand what Ezra meant, I can't wait to read the book.

Fuck yeah. A great female director.

Why we not talking about post natal depression/psychosis enough in these comments? It’s such a real thing and any mother who’s been through it, definitely does not choose to be absent/disconnected from her child. It is so- beyond words, really- deeper than that. If anything I would say that John’s character was more disconnected than Tilda. He was floating through like nothing was wrong. And although it’s easy to immediately assume it’s the mother’s “fault”, please have some consideration for the fact that she was experiencing something out of her control, with a partner who didn’t ever seem to notice she was struggling or support her to address the mental health issues she had post-partum. Mother’s are expected to be loving and caring, and so it’s hard to reach out for help when you’re not feeling that way because of the shame caused by societal expectations. The closest person to her, being John’s character, should have been able to see that she wasn’t coping if he really knew her, and maybe taken some initiative himself.

Tilda Swinton has an ethereal quality about her. She has that ,something ,. Pure class

What’s worse this or those mother-son relationship that the son is praised for everything.

Tilda is a true queen 👑

Ezras explanation makes no sense. Eva DID try to find the deeper cause of his problems, which were obvious from the start, and was shrugged off at every single turn in the most extreme & hateful ways. What more was she supposed to do for her son, when her son would never let her help? "Affluenza" and explanations like his, were created by lawyers and then passed off as psychological gospel. Some people are just fucked up and if anyone needed the belt, it was this kid lol. The only time he acted right, is when she threw his little disrespectful crazy ass on the ground.

Very compelling story, incredible performances from the two leads.

Tilda Swinton is amazing.

I think part of the kevin's problem is from the parents too. The mother that clearly never love her son, and the father who is blind and don't see that his son is a monster

Thank you Adam for believing in all of the people connected to this and seeing that this is not a death sentence of a movie as some have made it out to be

That is one handsome young man.

Films like that are meant to program us into helplessness and acceptance of evil in this world.

Gabor Maté discusses prenatal trauma, when a foetus picks up their mother’s feelings, which creates an emotional response in them that impacts their life beyond the womb. I felt foetal Kevin picked up his mother’s reluctance, her not wanting him. And this affected him so profoundly that all her attempts to bond with him were rejected out of his subconscious fear of more rejection. Then it was a downward spiral. Gabor says we should give pregnant women lots of societal support. Watched this film for the first time yesterday. 👏🏿 to director, script writer, Lionel Shriver and all the cast for handling such an intense and complex subject with sensitivity and subtlety.

anyone visiting this page in 2021?

I think that this movie does show the reality of the situation even though most sociopaths aren't murderers. Anyways, I feel like Eva was to unreliable of a source and we don't truly know the context of what actually happened other than Kevin did have issues. I feel like blame shouldn't lie on her but also on the dad but you know he's gone now. I feel like it could've been partly because of the bad parenting but also even if they were good parents towards him, this still could've very easily happened, the ending.

It's not just 'mother and son' relationships affected by this...Christ. My mother was an uncaring mom and I've heard numerous stories of mothers rejecting their daughters because they wanted sons or out of jealousy. Once I even heard a woman say her mom rejected her because her mother wanted to be the only girl in their family.

THE WHITE QUEEN!!!!

I believe a lesser noticed point in the movie is, women should never be forced to be mothers. Kevin's mother hadn't wanted to be a mother. She felt little connection to Kevin from the beginning. And this movie is testimony to how getting little maternal attention can twist a child into a monster.

Exactly why we searched the interview

Everyone, remember that when they gave their interviews, Tilda had been a mother for a long time, whereas Ezra had never been a parent. I understand why Ezra tried to identify sympathetically in some way with Kevin though, having played the character and thus having had to inhabit him. But it's very easy to blame parents for all sorts of things when you aren't one yourself and don't know what parenting is really like. On a broader level, one of the reasons it's so tempting to find a simple and obvious target person to blame and condemn as the cause for each dreadful thing that happens in the world, and then condemn that target as negligent, uncaring, stupid etc. for not doing this/that/the other obvious thing that would have prevented the dreadful thing, is that it provides us with twin senses of virtue and assurance. We can tell ourselves that since, unlike that person, we're aware of this, and thus would never make the same foolish and obvious mistakes that they did, something similar could never happen to us. But it's not true because it's not that simple. Like it or not, believe it or not, terrible things can happen to ANYONE, and ANYONE can end up with a psychopathic child. What if Kevin had experienced a covert brain bleed during his birth, destroying parts of his amygdala? Would you blame Eva for that? What if he was born with a malformation to his amygdala? Would you blame her for that? What if an unknown gene coding for the amygdala's formation was mutated spontaneously in him even before he was conceived, resulting in genetically-inevitable malformation? Would you blame Eva for that? Don't wait until it happens to you before you're forced to concede that something giving rise to psychopathic traits can happen to anyone, in any family of any type. It's the reality, no matter how much you may rile against people declaring it as such. So treat others as you would like to be treated, including the parents of someone like Kevin.

Saw Tilda Swinton here.. clicked faster than Yes.

Why were the towns people so hateful to Eva? I both read and saw the movie and that really upset me in both. She didn’t kill anyone! And she suffered her own loss with her husband and daughter being killed.

ezras pov was wrong tbh. the kid was literally born a psychopath and there’s nothing that could’ve been done to change that.

Almost makes me embarrassed to have my name.

did anybody understand what the girl in the end say???

My theory is that he is like that because he wasn't wanted. He was an accident and the mother didn't give him the love that you give to a child that you want and love.

I wasn't ''shifting'', Kevin is horrible and Eva is trying her best. I just felt sorry for Eva and hated Kevin throughout.

Like everyone in the film, Ezra Miller blames the mother character, instead of owning that his character IS a psychopath.

It's not either-or when it comes to nature vs. nurture: that's the big fallacy people fall into in discussions of things like psychopathy. One can have a genetic (or epigenetic - Eva's ancestors were subject to incalculable trauma by dint of mass genocide being carried out on their nation) predisposition to fail to not experience the normal sense of reward that comes from the prospect and effort of nurture. Not their fault if that gives off a vibe they are doing everything in their power not to give off. Not fair to stigmatise people in that situation, and very hard to do all the full range of nurturing things to the fullest extent without it. . If anything, the only thing Eva should definitely have done from the start was seek counselling, and Franklin should have gone along too. He created an echo chamber for his own warped reflections of 'American' constructs and ideologies about family and parenting, which he forced on Eva and cut her off from anything and everything that challenged them, using his all-American-bestowed patriarchal head-of-family privilege. A counsellor might have provided more of an even-handed input and stood up for Eva's position in things a bit more, reducing her resentment at the gaslighting and targeted blame/oppositional defiance she was being subjected to all the time from all sides in one way or another. . Likewise, that same genetically- (or epigenetically-) inherited predisposition can pass down to a child such as Kevin (maybe explaining their antagonistic but nevertheless unbreakable connection which he so resented for his lack of ability to break free from it via the methods of manipulation he could use to 'other' himself from the rest of his family), possibly translating into an alternative phenotype of psychopathy with very little help along the way. No unusual level of neglect or abuse involved; just the normal levels of messiness and imperfection. Many people whose children turn out just fine secretly struggle with such things in the course of parenthood. If it were purely nurture then all children of the same parents would be turned into psychopaths in the course of their childhood. Purely nature and all children born of the same parents would be as difficult as Kevin, no matter what the family home environment. . When we make it a nature vs. nurture thing, we inevitably end up either blaming parents to a disproportionate and unfair degree for their psychopathic children - ignoring all the efforts they made to raise them 'right' - or irredeemably condemning the psychopathic person themselves, on a level that implicates not just their actions or their emotions but their very soul, all for involuntarily not having feelings that we don't know why they don't have them, and that they can't help not having (which is totally different from saying that they can't help what they choose to DO in the absence of those feelings). In short, nature can influence nurture; nurture can influence nature. So nurture cannot totally change or suppress the programming of nature, and nature cannot totally predict or dictate the effects of nurture. . Besides, how many parenting books are there out there on first recognising at the earliest possible age, and then successfully implementing tailored parenting strategies, such as to raise a happy, healthy, law-abiding psychopath? How many pregnancy or genetic counselling services or resources are there out there on avoiding conceiving or gestating a psychopath in the first place? How many emotional counselling, philosophy or lifestyle books are there out there advising on how not to have any thoughts or experience any emotions that might influence a gestating baby or a young child to grow up a psychopath? . The 'nature' versus 'nurture' debate also leaves out another crucial consideration: 'culture'. What messages do a culture where fame for fame's sake is put on a pedestal, where guns and the use of them against injustice are frequently portrayed as essential, yet where people often don't in reality mean what they say or abide by what they advocate but instead simply say them because it's what society says people ought to say, send about what society's valuing of truth and true morality, when combined? And what if the above are also added into the mix? Isn't that triad a rather potent cocktail - much more potent than 'just' nature and nurture alone? . I truly don't believe it's a case of 'if you do/feel this, that and the other, and DON'T do/feel this, that and the other, you won't end up with a child who has psychopathic tendencies.' It's much more complicated than that. What you do/feel or don't do/feel can certainly influence your odds and also influence your child's emotional development; it can't completely prevent the development of psychopathy

I think Ezra is talking about his own mother.

Lionel Shriver has stated that she deliberately made the question of who was "to blame" ambiguous, so if you take a hard stance either way you've been played for a chump.

I don't know why Tilden Swinson got so much credit for this movie. She was really good, but it was Ezra Miller who MADE this movie.

Tilde Swinton is Thom Yorke. What do I win?

Lynne Ramsay can direct Blood Meridian

And the father who was just complacent with everything Eva told him. Also not helpful

I didn't know this movie was a horror?

Is that Lars Mikkelsen as a woman? 0:30

If you occasionally keep hitting kids to discipline or teach something you wont end up breaking their arm later...

really liked this movie, but the only thing I couldnt handle was john c reilly. I love him and he is a great actor, but my god I cant get dr. steve brule out of my head when I see him

Why did he leave the mother alive? Why only the father and sister? why not the mum too? I want to ask Kevin!

You clearly didnt see the movie.

1:58 - 2:05 That's child abuse.

I need subtitles for Lynn yikes

For f**** sake Sondheim died yesterday can't we have anything sacred in this world somewhere; we'll find a new way of living; a new way of beginning

No sympathy for her whatsoever Damn she was a victim and lost her whole family

Now i understand why Ezra tried to sympathize with his character 💀

Ezra miller is FOIIIINE

Last

omg i'm the 666th like

No wonder Kevin is a psycho he been abused and treated horribly. (I know this is a movie)

I am pretty sure the role in this movie messed up Ezra Miller's head 😢

I've alway thought Tilda might be pycothĺ be honest

this movie is so fucking weird

Transpocalipse now! A lady boy plays a female character in a movie based on a book written by another lady boy.

The actor who played Kevin was brilliant but he clearly doesn’t understand the film if this is his take.