Lynne Ramsay’s morbid and bludgeoning “We Need To Talk About Kevin,’’ the latest of far too many films loosely inspired by the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, adds a new, if not at all satisfying, twist to the formula.
Typically they center on agonized parents wondering just how little Johnny could have done such a horrible thing.
In this pretentious art-house downer version of “The Bad Seed,’’ the only surprise is that the folks didn’t ship the little monster off to the looney bin before he reached puberty.
This is the sort of movie where bloodshed is foreshadowed by Spaniards inexplicably writhing around in a red liquid in some sort of ceremony. The kind where it’s not hard to shudder in anticipation when the title character (played as a teenager by the creepy Ezra Miller) is given an archery set.
Kevin has already done his awful deed after that foreshadowing prologue, and his mother, Eva, is living alone (guess why?) in the Connecticut town where it happened, and where the locals like to splash her new home with red paint.
When she spurns a pass from a guy at her employer’s Christmas party, he informs her she’s lucky anyone is interested in her. Ouch.
Scottish director Ramsay (responsible for such critically praised misery wallows as “Ratcatcher’’ and “Morvern Callar’’) is not exactly shy about heaping blame on Eve.
The latter is played by Tilda Swinton in her worst neurasthenic masochist mode (she somehow won the best actress prize at the European Film Awards). Her alabaster complexion is set off by a black wig that makes her look like Morticia Addams — and not only in Ramsay’s unintentionally hilarious idea of an American Halloween.
During one particularly challenging toilet-training session with a defiant 5-year-old Kevin, Eve throws him on a changing table and breaks the child’s arm. She is more tolerant when she catches him masturbating.
For all the grief Kevin causes Eve, he’s perfectly nice and charming during the infrequent appearances of his dad (John C. Reilly), who keeps ordering poor Eve to be a little more patient between his business trips.
Swinton and Reilly make no sense as a couple, which is all of a piece with “We Need To Talk About Kevin,’’ where everyone’s motivations manage to seem simultaneously arbitrary and inevitable pretty much all the time.