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Oct 20, 2017 · A man who plays God for a living meets a boy who chooses to play Devil in Yorgos Lanthimos’ chilling and breathtaking “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.”
- Dunkirk
Like a more restless cousin of Terrence Malick, who infused...
- Dunkirk
Oct 20, 2017 · A surgeon's family is haunted by a mysterious boy who demands retribution for a past wrongdoing. Read critics' reviews and ratings for this dark and disturbing thriller by Yorgos Lanthimos.
- (280)
- Yorgos Lanthimos
- R
- Bill Camp
Oct 19, 2017 · “Sacred Deer” feels like a dark, opaque bit of folklore transplanted into an off-kilter modern setting. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a respected heart surgeon. His wife, Anna (Nicole ...
- Yorgos Lanthimos
- A.O. Scott
- 121 min
An absurdly funny and dread-filled experience, filled with Lanthimos' trademark wit and monotone performances. It won't be for everyone, but The Killing of a Sacred Deer is something unique and...
- One of the year's best.
- Verdict
By William Bibbiani
Posted: Oct 18, 2017 6:22 pm
In the world of Yorgos Lanthimos, everyone is a somnambulist. They glide slowly through hazy days, saying what they feel but feeling very little. It seems like it’s an affectation but give it time, and soon it will seem like the most natural thing in the world. Human beings can get used to anything, even the bizarre things that happen in Yorgos Lanthimos movies, and it takes extraordinary, sometimes horrifying circumstances to break us out of complacency.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is another delicious slice of cynicism from Lanthimos. It’s tempting to call it a slow burn. Instead it feels like it’s slowly rotting. A bacteria has been introduced to the Murphy family - Steven (Colin Farrell) and Anna (Nicole Kidman), and their children Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and Bob (Sunny Suljic) - in the form of Martin (Barry Keoghan), a teenaged interloper with a strange hold on this family. Just when it seems the nature of Martin’s power is explained, the movie reveals that he’s even more mysterious than they ever could have thought.
Eventually a bizarre form of blight infects the Murphy family - literally or figuratively, I leave that part to you - and Steven, the patriarch, is given an unthinkable choice to make. Yorgos Lanthimos gives Steven a rather long time to make that decision, subtracting conventional excitement from the movie in exchange for a nerve-wracking wallow in humiliation, guilt, denial, and eventually a despicable application of logic.
It would be a mistake to look too deeply at the “hows” and “whys” of The Killing of a Sacred Deer. The “whats” speak for themselves. When faced with the unthinkable the Murphy family thinks things they never thought before, and engage in bizarre behavior. They rage against new gods and then supplicate themselves before them. The love that they took for granted downgrades to gamesmanship, and every kind thing they ever did for one another becomes an item to be carefully catalogued.
With The Killing of a Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos lures us into his dream and shackles us there, for his own fascinating reasons. The experience is exquisite agony, both revelatory and painful. This is one of the best and most disturbing movies of the year.
- William Bibbiani
Oct 27, 2017 · The Killing of a Sacred Deer is humane and satirical, horrifying and hilarious, at once a work of realism and fantasy—Lanthimos, yet again, has found a surreal balance between extremes that...
May 22, 2017 · Film Review: ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’. Actions have consequences, as 'Dogtooth' director Yorgos Lanthimos reveals the profound tragedy in what seems like a perverse horror scenario. By...
