Interesting choice with the way the story is told. Is this how its told in the book?
The book is told as a series of letters written from Eva to Franklin well after the school shooting. So the split timeline between flashbacks and Eva's life after everything is about the same. Dropping the framing device does kind of ruin the twist that Kevin killed Franklin and Celia, though. Neither of them showing up in the "present" scenes makes it really obvious because it's the simplest explanation and there's no reason to think otherwise.
Also the book has a lot more detail about exactly how the shooting went down, since you seem disappointed that the movie didn't cover that.
Camden posted...
Is there more to why everyone in town hates Tilda Swinton beyond 'Related To Kevin = Bad'?
Not really, no. But it's less about "she's related to Kevin" and more about "she's Kevin's mother". Essentially, they kind of think that what happened is mostly her fault for raising such a terrible person. Obviously she must be an awful person for him to have turned out like that, right? (OK, it's obviously not that simple but that's their logic.) ---