Kevin is a suburban teen who doesn’t just have a bad attitude, he seems to lack a soul. We’re not told what troubles him; we are simply presented with a fait accompli, a bad child without a conscience and with a thirst for mayhem.

His frightened mother, played by Tilda Swinton, looks the other way, until one day Kevin shoots up the school and then himself. Ezra Miller, a thoughtful and smiling 18-year-old in the flesh, plays Kevin.

Was Kevin born a monster or the result of bad parenting?
What I found in those considerations was a wide web of answers. The notion of a singular answer is often sought after in these stories and scenarios. If you seek it you will find it; you will always find a singular answer if you want it. You can make something up.

But really, the answer to questions involving the human condition and human experience are always going to be very complex.

It’s too easy.
This pursuit of this standard of normality is actually dangerous because it doesn’t exist.

So you’re chasing after a fictional notion and, in the process, never accepting your actual self. Which is, from moment to moment, all you actually need.

Your character, the child who’s bad to the bone, is relatively rare in film.
It’s this notion of pure, unbridled evil coming from some sort of extra-terrestrial sort of supernatural source, as opposed to what is taboo and undiscussed, which is the fact that a kid can be horrible – a human, not a changeling, not a demon child, not the son of Satan, not Damien, just a human being. 

A human being born of very human parents and is very human the whole way through. That’s what makes it kind of untouchable. When these stories surface in the real world, we don’t confront them in an honest way either, no matter what they are.

You and Tilda are a great mix. What did she do for you?
Everything. Everything. I owe so much to her that I will never be able to repay her because she has everything she needs already.

Being asked to work with John C. Reilly (and) Tilda was like being asked to join the band that Jimi Hendrix was going to form with Miles Davis before he died. That kind of super group.