We’re all familiar awkward conversations. Whether it’s
eavesdropping on one in a public place, being confronted by a kid with no
filter who says whatever comes to his head, or some random stranger who won’t
take the hint you want him to just stop talking. And then there are those whose
insanity becomes more and more apparent as they keep going. If you want the
cinematic equivalent of being stuck in a conversation with that person, then The Killing of a Sacred Deer is the
movie for you.
Our story follows Stephen Murphy (Colin Farrell), a
cardiologist who seemingly has it all: a high-ranking job at a pristine
hospital, an immaculate house, a beautiful wife (Nicole Kidman) and two lovely
children (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic). But everyone has their secrets, and
Stephen’s is Martin (Barry Keoghan), a shy teenage boy he’s been having a
secret friendship with. Slowly but surely, Martin starts to creep himself into
his family’s life, and it’s revealed that it’s not companionship he wants, but justice.
Ten years prior, Martin’s father was a patient of Stephen’s who died on the
operating table and Martin blames Stephen for his death. After infiltrating his
family, he’s infected them with a paralyzing disease that will slowly kill them
one by one, and tells Stephen that the only way to save them is to kill one of
them himself.
This comes to us from renowned Greek director Yorgos
Lanthimos, who’s responsible for notoriously off-kilter films like Dogtooth and The Lobster, the latter of which was one of my favorite movies of last year. If you’ve seen either of those films, you should know what to
expect, but for the uninitiated, the best word to describe Lanthimos’s body of
work is “uncomfortable”. While everything seems normal on the surface, there’s
something off about it. The dialogue is simple and stilted. The camera work is
gliding and voyeuristic, evoking the works of Kubrick, Polanski and Hanake. The
opening shot is an extreme close-up on a pair of hands performing surgery on a
beating heart. While Lanthimos has used these techniques in the past for
comedy, here they evoke horror.
In fact, the stilted dialogue is probably what will make or
break the movie for some people, with actors delivering their lines like
they’re reading the surgeon’s general warning on a medicine bottle,
occasionally sharing way too much personal information, remaining stone-faced
even when they’re throwing a tantrum. It’s not just the delivery that’s
deadpan, but the character’s reaction to the events unfolding is unnaturally
deadpan. It isn’t until the third act when shit starts hitting the fan that
small sparks of realistic reactions start to crack through in the performances.
Nicole Kidman finds out her husband has been seeing this young boy and her
response is “Huh, how about that?” Their daughter nonchalantly tells this
strange boy about her first period the way she’d bring up getting a B on her
math test. A character Stephen just met kisses and licks his hand, and while he’s
clearly creeped out by it, he reacts more like a movie-goer getting up to go to
the bathroom. This is all an obvious stylistic choice, and one that has become
Lanthimos’s trademark, but it adds to the unsettling atmosphere.
But halfway through, the film shifts gears from an absurdist
anti-humor sitcom into something much more sinister. Barry Keoghan remains as
deadpan as everyone else, but his portrayal of Martin is unnervingly polite,
even when he’s manipulating Stephen to do horrible things to his family. When
you get right down to it, The Killing of
a Sacred Deer is a modern take on the Greek tragedy. Without giving away
the saucy details, it follows the formula to a T: a man of great stature is
brought low, his actions aren’t necessarily bad or evil or even his fault
(although he’s undoubtedly a victim, Stephen is nowhere near the model citizen he
appears to be), but he is judged by them nonetheless, and by the end he is
filled with great remorse upon the realization of his actions. Hell, the title
of the movie itself is a reference to Iphigenia
in Aulis. And it all culminates in one of the cruelest movies scenes in
recent memory; a climax right out of Funny Games or an arthouse rendition of
Saw. (It doesn’t top the sheer horror of Mother!,
but it comes pretty damn close.) If there’s a message for the audience to take
away from all of this, it isn’t quite clear, or at least it’s harder to decode
than The Lobster and Dogtooth were. At first it seemed like
the director had enough faith in the audience to come to their own conclusion
(the A24 ending strikes again here), there’s one moment where a character
literally says “Don’t you get it? It’s a metaphor,” that seriously throws that
faith into question.
Bottom line, The
Killing of a Sacred Deer is very much an acquired taste. The acting might
be a hurdle for some, but it does an outstanding job of making the audience as
uncomfortable as humanly possible. I didn’t take away nearly as much from this
as I did from The Lobster, but there’s
still a lot there for me to give it a recommendation. Just know what you’re
getting into.
7/10
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