Lynne Ramsay’s new film “We Need to Talk about Kevin” is a psychological horror film, a nightmarish exploration of a mother’s greatest fear: what if my child hates me? What if I hate him back?

Tilda Swinton (Academy Award-winner for “Michael Clayton”) stars as Eva, a mother whose son Kevin (Ezra Miller) seems to be the very incarnation of evil. Kevin constantly antagonizes his mother by refusing to speak, insisting on defecating in his pants and verbally assaulting her. However, Eva’s husband Franklin (John C. Reilly from “Step Brothers” and “Chicago”) never sees this side of Kevin. To Franklin, he is just a little boy and this is what little boys do.

As Kevin grows older, his mischief escalates from merely crying too loud to coarse language and acts of violence. One such act of violence (which I’m not sure is a spoiler or not, but let’s just say that all the other kids with their pumped up kicks better run) is the catalyst for the narrative.

“Kevin” begins as Eva is trying to reconstruct her life. It flashes back to different moments in her parenting career as she tries to piece together what went wrong. Was Kevin just evil from the start or did she fail him somehow as a mother?

Ramsay crafts “Kevin” brilliantly, utilizing a multi-layered and nuanced soundtrack to foreshadow frightening events and add a sinister atmosphere to Eva’s psychological subjectivity. If “Kevin” is a horror film, it is a psychological horror film. That is to say, this is not a splatter fest or a found footage, jump-out movie. The horror in this film lies in the realization of one woman’s greatest fears and her own inability to deal with profound feelings of guilt and shame.

There are shocking and disturbing acts of violence in “Kevin,” but they are never exploited tastelessly. In fact, we never see the most disturbing things that happen. But we don’t have to because Ramsay is a master of her craft. She can merely suggest the terror that lies beneath with careful framing, the slightest shift of focus, or intrusive sound editing. This is Ramsay’s film, and she writes and directs it with wisdom beyond her brief career.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have Swinton in your lead role. Swinton is a fearless actress, and here again she takes on an unflattering role and conveys complex emotions with little more than a blank stare a pursed lips. It might be the greatest performance I have seen her give.

Reilly isn’t given much to do, but he was smartly cast as the clueless husband and father with a heart of gold.

The two Kevins, though, Jasper Newell (as a toddler) and Ezra Miller (as a teenager) are fascinating. This is a complicated character portrayal to pull off. Ramsay and her actors have made Kevin nearly a force of evil, almost entirely devoid of humanity, almost. If the performances here don’t work, the entire film collapses. Luckily, they are flawless performances, and the sheer magnitude and groundlessness about Kevin’s evil allows the film to neither blame Eva for how her child turns out, nor vindicate her completely. It’s truly brilliant.

“Kevin” is a strange movie, a tough movie. It’s not for everyone. A man behind me, at the end of the film, said, “well that was a real pick-me-up.” That was about the only thing anyone in the crowded theater could say. This film has legs. Like its title character, it at once defies and desires explanation. After seeing a film or an act of violence so striking, there is nothing to say. And yet, the witnesses (in this case the audience) feel the need to say something, anything. You will need to talk about “Kevin.”

5/5