HIGH school massacres are understandably a popular subject for filmmakers following tragedies such as Columbine.

However, while previous attempts to understand why a teenager from an affluent middle-class family might wake up one day and decide to murder his fellow classmates in cold blood have told the story through the eyes of the killer, Lynne Ramsay’s spine-tingling adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel of the same name shifts the focus to the mother.

Tilda Swinton gives the performance of her career as Eva, a career woman turned suburban housewife left reeling after her 16-year-old son Kevin (a creepy Ezra Miller) goes on a killing spree.

Suffering from the worst case of post-natal depression in cinematic history, she is the epitome of harrowed misery.

Gaunt and distressed, Swinton’s face is hard to take your eyes off.

The film opens with Eva waking up from a blissful dream of enjoying the tomato festival in Spain to the nightmare of her life in the aftermath of the slayings.

From here, the story is told in broken flashbacks, chronicling her disturbed child’s life from birth up until the horrific incident.

There are echoes of classic horrors such as Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, with the mother’s protestations about the clearly psychotic child falling on deaf and frequently unsympathetic ears, particularly from Kevin’s oblivious and doting dad (John C Reilly).

He explains away their son’s odd behaviour as boyish exuberance, even pointing the finger at Eva.

With the town and victims’ families holding her responsible for what happened, assaulting her and vandalising her home, she is therefore left pondering a terrible question — was Kevin’s fate her fault?

As much an intimate and intense character study, it is also a film about the alienation of parenthood and its potentially devastating effect on love and marriage.

Despite no resolution offered, amazingly, Ramsay manages to sustain you interest right to the end.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (15) is out on Friday and is showing at the BFI London Film Festival tonight and tomorrow. To book tickets, visit bfi.org.uk/lff