Somehow I got onto a really dark movie path in the passed few weeks. We Need to Talk About Kevinis my latest stop on The Feel Good About Nothing tour.

We Need is the story of a mother who never makes a connection with her son. From the very beginning there is an emotional rift between Eva and her son Kevin. Kevin immediately picks up on it and grows to completely resent his mother. Up until Kevin turns 15, there is something very strange about Kevin. Eva is very cautious and tentative about it while her husband Franklin dismisses or outright ignores any signs of wrong doing. One day at high school, Kevin innacts a plan that cannot be ignored.

A great and rather odd cast anchors We Need. Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly play Kevin’s parents and Ezra Milller plays Kevin (the two kids playing Kevin at age 3 and 7 are shockingly good too). There’s a real chemistry and disturbed energy between Eva and Kevin that is brought to life by Tilda and Ezra. John C. is more known for his comedic roles, so seeing him in a movie like this was a real trip for me. He makes it work though, as he plays Franklin as a gentle and loving soul that is unknowingly in the center of a growing maelstrom. The story is told from Eva’s perspective, or more accurately her memory. We bounce around from the past to the present and back again gaining pieces of the puzzle with each stop. It’s a bit jarring in the beginning and it’s hard to tell what’s really going on, but the ebb and flow does click in and makes sense. There’s a lot to take in from scene to scene as the visual palate changes every time Eva recalls different moments.

The topic of We Need is a complex puzzle (and rather taboo). It’s nature vs nurture, the role and responsibilities of parenthood. There’s really no clear answer to the puzzle and the movie clearly shows that. Seeing things through Eva’s memories, it’s like we’re thinking about what happened with her over and over again. Is she responsible for all of Kevin’s actions? Is she the one to really blame? Where did it go wrong, could she have done anything differently? “Why?” is constantly asked and never answered. We Need is a stark look into the side of tragedies that is often over looked. We always look first to the perpetrator, but what about the collateral damage to the immediate family? A lot of lives get ruined in a wide radius.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a uncomfortable movie to watch, but it’s really thought provoking and that makes it worth experiencing.

Elijah Wood stars in Maniac, a remake of the original made in 1980 (which I have not seen). I’m a big fan of Elijah Wood and his work here made for one of the most effective horror movies recently released.

Frank is a very disturbed young man, molded by an abusive childhood where his mother subjugated him to things a child should never see. With mommy issues galore, Frank takes it out on women he stalks in the night, killing, then scalping them to keep as a trophy.

Using a rather unique first person perspective that is pulled off extraordinarily well, we are literally put into the head of a psychopath. We come out of his head only for brief moments which makes for a really tense and disturbing horror experience. While we don’t hear Frank’s thoughts, we do hear everything he says. He’s often fighting with himself, so it doesn’t take much inference to figure out what he’s thinking.

Elijah Wood is really terrific, giving Frank a real emotional core of a person who just never had a chance. He’s so mentally disturbed, just struggling to hang on to some sort of normal life. He manages to make a living by restoring mannequins and when he meets Anna, he thinks he might actually see a light at the end of the tunnel. He desperately wants to have a relationship but constantly snaps into a murderous state, haunted by flashbacks to his childhood and the physical torture of migraine headaches. There’s a war in Frank’s head and the audience is a witness to it all.

This is a tough movie to watch and the visual effects are very, very well done making the horror seem all that much more real. Really great editing, this must have been a tough film to pull off the page and put onto the screen in such an effective manner. I think this is a real standout for horror buffs.