Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to his brilliant pitch-black romantic fable The Lobster, begins with a matter-of-fact shot of a human heart as it undergoes surgery soon followed by a surgeon peeling off his blood-stained latex gloves and throwing it in the bin. A doctor, it must be remembered, shall always have blood on his hands, whether literally or metaphorically, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer marries this notion to the myth of Iphigenia to create a deeply unsettling film of methodical revenge and foredoomed sacrifice.

Lanthimos presents Dr. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell), a cardiologist with an ophthalmologist wife Anna (Nicole Kidman), a 14-year-old daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) who just started menstruating, and a 12-year-old son Bob (Sunny Suljic), seemingly unremarkable to his father save for his hair, which Steven wishes he would cut. There's mention of Steven's past alcoholism, though he's gone without a drop for the past three years, his sobriety most likely due to Anna's watchful eye. The couple's sex life is active, though the aphrodisiac is unusual: "General anaesthetic?" Anna asks before lying supine on their bed for Steven to masturbate to her unconscious form before resuscitating her with far more probing methods.

So what to make of Martin (Barry Keoghan), the 16-year-old with whom Steven conducts somewhat secretive rendezvous? They meet in diners or by the riverside (one shot strongly recalls Hitchcock's Vertigo) or at the hospital, though the time and location is almost always set by Steven. The nature of their relationship is tantalisingly teased until details reveal that Steven feels an obligation to this boy whose father died on his operating table. He invites Martin to his home ("Such a nice boy," Anna notes; Kim, smitten, would agree); Martin, in turn, gratefully welcomes him to his far more humble home where his mother (Alicia Silverstone, wonderful in a small role) exacerbates Steven's unease with unwelcome advances ("I won't let you leave until you've tried my tart!").

Then, almost suddenly but perceptibly, the tenor of Steven and Martin's relationship changes. "That critical moment we both knew would come someday - here it is..." Martin announces to Steven after Bob inexplicably becomes paralysed. As Steven destroyed his family by killing his father during surgery, he must redress the situation by sacrificing one of his own. If Steven fails to make a choice then, one by one, his family will become paralysed, lose the will to eat, and then bleed from their eyes before dying. Lose one or lose all, tick tock tick tock.

If Lanthimos' work is characterised by a deadpan absurdity, then The Killing of a Sacred Deer finds that hallmark at its most extreme and ruthless. More serious in tone than The Lobster, though not without comic frissons, the film is a horror film that shreds the nerves with its calm and impassivity. Lanthimos injects grand guignol flourishes, most empathically in the soundtrack (featuring works by Bach, Schubert, and Ligeti) but also in many of its images, which sear the brain and poison the bloodstream: blood dripping from Bob's eyes, Martin sinking his teeth into his own flesh, or the bloodless but bloodcurdling scene in which a hooded Steven takes blind shots at his family, each of whom are bound, gagged, hooded, and utterly terrified.

It's safe to say that, like his previous works, The Killing of the Sacred Deer will not be to everyone's tastes. As per the Lanthimos style, the humour is morbid, the savagery is sedate, the brutality becalmed and is all the more heightened because of it. Cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis composes scenes of glacial magnificence that are tenaciously inconsolable. A dreamlike, otherworldly quality pervades, the type where one seems to be in slow motion and where foreboding envelops even the most mundane word or gesture. There's a constant sense that events unfold under a divinity's dispassionate gaze.

The actors are uniformly superb, but particularly outstanding are Keoghan and Kidman. The former is akin to a sprite bearing bad tidings, whilst the latter is impeccably commanding, her face both affectless yet expressing multitudes as the camera holds her in its merciless grasp.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos

Written by: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou

Starring: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Alicia Silverstone, Sunny Suljic, Bill Camp