Movie Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is as strange and unique as its title suggests. It’s directed and co-written by Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, who teamed up with his The Lobster star Colin Farrell.
Farrell plays a cardiac surgeon named Steven Murphy, who befriends a teen named Martin (Barry Keoghan, Dunkirk). The plot very slowly develops, giving you an uneasy feeling through its eerie music that plays even before anything creepy has happened, and its shot composition. In this sense, it sort of resembles Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Steven has a loving family, including his wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman), and his two children, Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and Bob (Sunny Suljic). They all meet Martin one day, who bonds particularly with Kim. Steven explains to his wife that Martin’s father had died in a car accident, and he has been helping him grieve.
Martin tries to spend more and more time with Steven, who tries to break it off and avoid the kid. This includes him rejecting romantic advances of Martin’s mother, played by Alicia Silverstone (Clueless).
One morning, Bob finds that he cannot use his legs. He is taken to the hospital, and there is no explanation for why he was paralyzed. He recovers as he is about to leave the hospital, but collapses, paralyzed once again. Kim meets Martin for a date.
Martin visits Bob in the hospital, and demands to talk to Steven, finally revealing the backstory to the plot. Martin’s father died while having his surgery performed by Steven, who he blames for it. He says he’s put a curse on the members of Steven’s family that will gradually kill all of them unless Steven kills one of them.
Steven gradually comes to believe Martin, once his daughter is paralyzed. The film escalates in an interesting way, but I think I still prefer the first half and the slow build.
This movie is certainly interesting, and I’ve done my best not to give too much away. It’s pretty different, and I think the comparison to The Shining is pretty fair; look at the poster at the top of this review. Someone else compared it to Kubrick.
All this having been said, I didn’t love the movies. It’s a bit irritating how nearly every actor plays their role in the same disaffected way, and it makes the movie not as emotional as it probably could be. I mean, any movie that proposes that the main character has to murder one of his family members to save the others should be rife with emotional conflict, but that’s more in theory than in practice.
I think it’s a hard movie to describe, though. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, then you should watch it, but it’s not for everybody.
Rating: 7/10
