Five-Legged Iguana

¡Qué horror! 2012

Candidate # 19

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

(May 2011)

Care for a double bill that can potentially work far better than rubbers or the pill to effect birth control?

Try pairing past ¡Qué Horror! title, George Ratliff’s Joshua, with Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.

A powerful and terrifyingly chilling entry in the annals of bad seed cinema, We Need to Talk About Kevin is based on Lionel Shriver’s novel, and is so good, that it got Shriver’s seal of approval, as evidenced on the UK quad above.

With a painfully exquisite performance by Tilda Swinton (who was nominated for a Golden Globe for the role, but snubbed by Oscar) as Eva Khatchadourian, and an appropriately “f*cker’s so smug you wanna just slap him silly” turn by Ezra Miller as her fundamentally disturbed son, the eponymous Kevin, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a grim depiction (made even more harrowing by its non-linear narrative structure) of just how wrong raising a child can turn out, and how the ultimately selfish acts of willful and unmindful children impact and reflect on the adults in their vicinity.

Parting shot: Though I love the devil baby OS above, I feel I need to stress that, like Joshua, there is nothing remotely supernatural about the situation in We Need to Talk About Kevin, which, of course, makes it all the more disturbing.

(We Need to Talk About Kevin OS’ and UK quad courtesy of impawards.com.)