THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

Yorgos Lanthimos seems to have one goal in mind and that is to open the collective hood of society and its institutions and slowly rip all of the parts out of it. In doing so, he creates nightmares for the modern age. How can we really know what love is when society is always insistent that it must be one thing, rather than the many that it is? What happens to the rigidity of societal values when they are matched up against the reality of the human condition? These two questions have been asked multiple times by Lanthimos and his writing partner Efthymis Filippou, mostly to comedic effect, and always excellently. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better run of films from two people other than the Coen’s, with Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer defining the careers of Lanthimos and Filippou. In their most recent feature, the question concerning rigidity of social values is better implemented, but another question is presented in the process: How in all the angst and rules can humanity keep from becoming sociopaths? THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is a film about sociopaths that grinds the audience into thinking like one and it is one of the most riveting films of the year for it.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER focuses on the family of Steven (Colin Farrell) and Anna (Nicole Kidman). Both are doctors, and both after years of surrounding themselves with the horrors of pain, bodily mutilation, and death, have become numb to the idea of human contact. Soon a family friend, Martin, (Barry Keoghan) starts to threaten their way of life and their ideas of reality and family unspool, leaving them in a living nightmare.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER’s audience manipulation is so specific to the film itself that you can’t help but marvel at the way that Lanthimos and Filippou have constructed it. They force us to confront an almost impossible, magical thing and then make us consider how insane we are for actually believing it ourselves. For as much as The Lobster and Dogtooth impress, The Killing of a Sacred Deer seems to be the first film of theirs that is actually forcing the audience to reconsider the way that they are interpreting the work while watching the work. If the man on screen is stark raving mad for believing in these impossible events, then what are we the audience? Are we not mad? The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a terrifying and thrilling roller coaster over all these questions (AND MORE!) and the way it forces the audience into a corner is as masterful as a film gets. Lanthimos and Filippou were awarded the best screenplay award at Cannes this year and the reason mostly lies in just how much THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEERcovers in its virtuoso dialogue. Like The Lobster, this is a movie that needs to be picked apart after seeing it upwards of ten times and at the moment I’ve only seen it once.

This is combined with the fact that THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER is also truly scary and relentlessly involving. For as ridiculous as it often gets, this film is never funny the way that The Lobster or Dogtooth intended to be. Instead, it is moody, morose and utterly believable, making its bite is even harder. There’s no comedic edge to soften the breadth of theme that the scriptwriters have chock filled the film with. It just hits you going 60 like a car on the highway.

Much in the vein of David Fincher (though I wouldn’t venture to compare the two too closely) Lanthimos uses his very stark directing style to ground the metaphorical tales that he tells. It’s ruthlessly minimalistic but is often punctuated by moments of handheld camera that remind the audience of the events quickly chasing our characters into a brutal end, or also moments of wonderful formalistic flair (seriously, the use of slow-motion and orchestral music is becoming a motif in Lanthimos’ filmography). Lanthimos has created a work of crystal clarity, strong and motivated by a cast who make it work. Farrell is just as good here as he was in The Lobster, which is to say great but not as great as he was in The New World (which being the best film ever made is pretty hard to beat). Nicole Kidman comes in and somehow tops her performance in The Beguiled to craft a character that is simply attempting to figure out how to defuse the situation in whatever position of power she can hold. The father is in charge here but he certainly doesn’t know best, acting irrationally to the point that the mother must clean up after him. This makes for a not so quietly revolutionary experience, the same way that The Lobster was.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER has some of the most horrifying imagery ever put to screen. It is also one of the most entertaining horror films of all time, serving up frustration and fear in its ability to force its audience to believe things that have a hint of magic to them, but also so much horror. Lanthimos, Filippou, and everyone else have brought their A games in a way that many audiences won’t be ready for, but for those who are, The Killing of a Sacred Deer will stand as a movie that must be seen and forces you to believe.

5 of 5 Stars