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| Colin Farrell in The Killing of a Sacred Deer |
Anna Murphy: Nicole Kidman
Martin: Barry Keoghan
Kim Murphy: Raffey Cassidy
Bob Murphy: Sunny Suljic
Matthew Williams: Bill Camp
Martin's Mother: Alicia Silverstone
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenplay: Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Cinematography: Thimios Bakatakis
Production design: Jade Healy
Film editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis
This is only the third film by Yorgos Lanthimos that I've seen, but I'd say that he and his screenwriting partner, Efthymis Filippou, have a beef with people who play god. In Dogtooth (2009) it was the parents who attempt to create their own utopia by keeping their children ignorant of the outside world. In The Lobster (2015) it was the manager of the hotel that purports to find its residents new mates. And in The Killing of a Sacred Deer it's that archetypal god-player, the surgeon, who finds that the son of a patient he may have killed on the operating table has a mysterious power over him and his family. Behind this film lies a Greek myth about hubris, specifically the story of the punishment meted out by the gods to the house of Atreus, as reflected in the Euripedean tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis, which is referred to in the film as well as its title. But Lanthimos isn't interested in a direct transmutation of the Greek legend into modern terms. His film is a droll, underplayed, and often quite chilling tale that keeps one foot in reality while plaguing the characters with forces that come out of myths about the Fates and the Furies. It's as creepy as any horror movie you can name, but because the cast is so skilled at underplaying I found myself laughing -- a little nervously, yes -- at the absurdities in which their characters found themselves as much as I was flinching at the mental and physical pain they were undergoing. Sex in the film is a kind of torment: Anna Murphy seems to be able to get off only by first lying in an awkward position, dangling from the bed, and she is forced to give the rather unpleasant anesthesiologist (who may have been the one who really killed the patient) a hand job to gain information about their tormentor. That tormentor, Martin, seems to have an attraction to Steven Murphy that he tries to fulfill by pimping out his own mother. Much is made of the fact that Kim, the daughter, is having her first period. And so on. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is such an accumulation of odd details that it almost founders underneath them, and if you're looking for a conventional narrative payoff, go elsewhere. But there is a strange genius at work here, and I'm eager to see more from Lanthimos, including The Favourite, which is getting extraordinary attention now in awards season.
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