The new trailer for Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, aimed at the US market, goes further than anything we’ve yet seen. It also makes sure we know that Tilda Swinton gives an amazing performance, then again, what else is new. She always does. She and John C. Reilly star as the parents of a teenage old boy (Ezra Miller) who goes on a high-school killing spree and must try to deal with their grief and feelings of responsibility for their child's actions.

Official synopsis: Eva (Swinton) puts her ambitions and career aside to give birth to Kevin. The relationship between mother and son is difficult from the very first years. When Kevin is 15 , he does something irrational and unforgivable in the eyes of the entire community. Eva grapples with her own feelings of grief and responsibility. Did she ever love her son? And how much of what Kevin did was her fault? 

I’ve loved every trailer I’ve seen for this. Usually the music used gives us cues as to what the mood and tone are of what we're about to see. If that were true here, coupled with the expression on Swinton's face for the first half of it, I'd think this was a comedy of sorts. The mood and tone shift about half-way through and we know we're dealing with something much darker, but it doesn't tell you how to feel about it.

We Need to Talk About Kevin  wowed at Cannes and at TIFF and every festival you can think of. It won the BFI London Film Festival’s equivalent of Best Picture last week and has already opened in the UK. It gets a limited (grrrrrr) US release on December 2.