By treating Kevin's evil as a mystery to be solved, Ramsay only succeeds in making what was once allusive banal.
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What are critics saying?
There are so many great things happening on almost every level of this movie, from Swinton's haunting, magnetic and tremendously vulnerable performance, which is absolutely free of condescension to the suburban American wife-ness of her character, to the many unsettling individual moments.
The purpose of Lynne Ramsay's hodgepodge approach is to distract us from the flimsiness of a story that suggests a snide art-house take on "The Omen."
The movie toggles between two periods-before and after a catastrophe-and, were it not for Swinton's magnetism, it would be unbearable. Instead, you'll want to stay for the wallop.
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
This is, in a way, a real horror film about everyday things and a disconnected family.
An exquisitely realized adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel. In a rigorously subtle performance as a woman coping with the horrific damage wrought by her psychopathic son, Tilda Swinton anchors the dialogue-light film with an expressiveness that matches her star turn in "I Am Love."
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
Ezra Miller's sneering, absurdly precocious evil-child performance makes him just another bad-seed horror villain.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The movie is creepy, but it has no texture or depth. It's like "The Omen" directed by Miranda July.
This is the most unwatchable horror movie masquerading as social comment I have seen this year.