One of the hottest films to see this year has to be We Need to Talk About Kevin, which legendary film critic Peter Bradshaw has dubbed a “nightmarishly satirical vision of marriage and family life, a sceptical and deconstructive assault on the sentimental ideal of motherhood.”

The film is based on Lionel Shriver’s best-selling novel of the same title, the same novel which, incidentally, has given me an unnatural phobia of small children; my cousins still wonder why I flinch when they reach for a water pistol! According to the rave reviews it got at Cannes this year, Lynne Ramsay’s interpretation of events are just as gripping, just as thought-provoking and just as horrific as the book. Which means it comes as no surprise that the trailer has us hooked:

Pretty messed-up stuff, huh? Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly seem set to lead a fantastic cast, telling the troubling story of a middle-aged mother trying to come to terms with the fact that her teenage son, Kevin, is now in prison for carrying out a Columbine-style atrocity in a featureless American town. I’m guessing a simple time out wouldn’t really cut the mustard here.

So it seems that, on the 21st October, we should all hit our local cinema for a cold hard dose of human terror. And, of course, it’s the perfect advocate for heightened sexual protection. After all, nobody wants their very own little Kevin…