The story is simply not making any sense. Evil does not look like this at all. The relationships do not match anything sensical in real life. Nothing that the kid does would really lead to murder. We need a real story of mass killer but this is not it.

This is not an easy film to watch, on any level. If, like me, you immediately begin arguing in your head with the director from the beginning, you will have to drag yourself through it. After about 30 minutes, I just had to roll with it, and it was ultimately rewarding.One of the things I ended up appreciating about the film was its stubborn resistance to giving the audience anything they have come to expect in this type of story. There is no preaching, no messaging, no resolution... just the starkness of the account. That touches on my primary criticism of the film, which I will return to later.A few great choices by the director that undermined any sentimentality or dog whistles to well-worn narratives and debates:The choice to make the dad useless. - The choice to make the setting a relatively wealthy family with apparently few temporal problems or concerns. - The choice to make the home large, impersonal and practically empty. - The choice to sidestep any political distractions of gun ownership. - The choice to portray the parents as highly imperfect or worse.A few minor criticisms:John C. Reilly's character was truly one inch deep with canned lines. He had two functions in the film - to frustrate the mother and to placate the child. And that is exactly what he did. No more, no less.The mother's workplace was too cartoonish and so were her co- workers. It's a crummy place to work full of losers. We get it. No really, stop, STOP, we get it!My primary criticism of the film, however, is that the director made the editing and the facade of the film a giant, unwelcome distraction. It's a gimmick. The story would have been MUCH more powerful had it been told quietly, but instead the entire film is almost dominated by (what I took as) nightmarish portrayals of the inner workings of the mother's mind. This is like the Marilyn Manson remix of what would otherwise be a very subversive and chilling film.

The thing that bothered me the most about the story is the fact that the parents never held Kevin accountable for anything that he did, ever! It seemed like no matter how awful it got, they just let it go over and over again. I'm not entirely sure how he could pour chemicals into his sister's eye and get away with it with absolutely zero repercussions. I mean, she would have been screaming and in horrible pain, but she acted like she wasn't even upset about it or even remotely afraid of her abusive older brother. And why did the parents just let him call his sister stupid all the time? Normal parents would not stand for that! And as his actions get progressively more violent, they continue to just let everything go without ever saying anything. I mean, the guinea pig thing...really? She's just going to let that go without saying anything to anybody, particularly Kevin? What kind of parent would never once try to correct a child who is so cruel and destructive and violent and never shows any remorse? I haven't read the book, so I'm wondering if maybe the book portrays the mother a bit differently than the movie. I couldn't understand how she could be so weak. She basically allowed him to do what he did. She should have gotten psychiatric help for him years ago. He belonged in an inpatient treatment center of some kind. I felt sorry for her in a way, but in other ways she infuriated me. Overall it was well acted and visually interesting, but very dark subject matter. I don't mind dark subject matter when I can sympathize with the good guys, but in this case it was sometimes hard to sympathize with the mother since she never did the obvious things to try to get him to stop doing the things he was doing, never even once told him that he shouldn't do those things!

Eva, once a successful travel writer, struggles to raise her son, Kevin, because of his strange and dangerous deeds. As growing up, he gets beautiful and handsome, but at the same time, his fearful action escalates severely... The day since Kevin conducts an irreversible accident, everything has changed ...The story of film goes back and force incessantly and little by little the mysterious parts of the film is solved. Through whole film, I could never look away from the screen. But in this film, vivid red color comes out over times to such an extent that I squeezed my eyes tightly. The red effect brings the audience to eeriness and scare.By virtue of the film, I get to know how hard and difficult to raise child at the expense of what parents want to do. What is worse, the child is not grown up as they hope to and the child doesn't open up mind to them… Parents can't choose how the child is given birth to… In my opinion, Kevin's extreme action is unforgivable but he wanted to attract attention from Eva no matter what he uses means. He has a pure mind as the same age ordinary children.