Elliptical, sprawling, transfixed by the natural or at least the pseudo-natural (chiefly, food), We Need to Talk About Kevin confirms that Lynne Ramsay is the heir apparent to Terrence Malick in more ways than just her lack of prolificacy. But she shows that his method can be used to more sobering, less transcendental effect. Where billowing curtains are a hopeful, ethereal symbol in The Tree of Life, here they signify death; where Malick has locusts wreak biblical havoc on the farm in Days of Heaven, Ramsay has ants devour a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich left angrily smeared on a glass coffee table. Her images, though no less pretty, are all about bringing you back down to earth. She’s also more willing to be ironic (Tilda Swinton’s Eva Khatchadourian, reluctantly enduring her 15 minutes, hides from onlookers amidst a Warholian row of soup cans) and blackly comic–I suspect I haven’t been with an audience this ashamed of itself for laughing since I saw Happiness, also at the TIFF.