They have you terrified at what was going to come out of someones mouth in just about every scene. I dont know if I liked it or hated it. I appreciated they made Me squirm for a couple hours. But now I think I need to wash it down with like, i dont know, a disney movie lol or something. The people, every last one of them are seriously messed up in the head. Brace yourself to be pushed in the incredibly uncomfortable zone. Should have a warning, "written by some one with psycological issues"
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SeanDTheFilmMaker16 October 2018
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maurice_yacowar8 November 2017It takes a Greek director — Yorgos Lanthimos — to revive the elemental power of Greek tragedy in a modern setting.
Because this is such a primal story it could be the most powerful and disturbing film of the year. The characters speak in a kind of dead tone, usually on banal matters (like how waterproof a watch is). The music alternates eerie silences with harsh nerve-wracking strings and drums. Shots of surgery and blood churn the stomach. The widescreen settings have an amphitheatrical stretch. Alone among recent films, it sends you out in catharsis — "calm of mind, all passion spent." This film releases you, drained.
A man's misdeed brings down a curse upon his entire house that only his own immense sacrifice can expiate. That's the Greek tragedy, beside which our mundane stories of simple guilt, rationalization, mercy, forgiveness, and even human justice — the business of cops and courts — dwindle into insignificance.
This primitive drama involves a heart surgeon Steven Murphy and his ophthalmologist wife Anna. That is, the elemental force erupts in the seat of modern science, rationalism, humanity. The professional curers are profoundly afflicted. Their reason is helpless, irrelevant, once the old pagan gods have been stirred to ire.
Dr Murphy was at least tipsy when his bungled surgery cost a man's life. Murphy has not openly accepted responsibility or expressed his guilt. But he did attend the man's funeral and stop drinking altogether. He also befriended the man's orphaned son Martin, whom he buys gifts and offers friendship as a sop to confronting his own guilt on any deeper level.
Now Martin swells from orphaned son into preternatural agent of vengeance. For his father's death has proved a curse on his house too. He and his mother — in different ways — crave Dr Murphy to replace the dead man in their lives: "My mom's attracted to you. She's got a great body."
This thuggish kid has an other-worldly understanding. He has become the seer, the oracle who alone fathoms the root cause of the Murphy curse and its resolution. If Murphy doesn't kill one of his children, his entire family will die. First they are paralyzed, deprived of appetite and will, then their eyes erupt in Oedipusian bleed, then they die.
Of course these modern sophisticates deny this savage myth. Murphy in particular blames Martin for the curse he has only reported. Daughter Kim understands, because she wrote a paper on Iphygenia, Agamemnon's daughter whom he has to sacrifice to atone for having killed a sacred deer.
Kim is attracted to Martin and offers herself to him. In him she senses a worldliness apart from the others. Having initially assumed kid brother Bob would go ("Can I have your MP3 when you die?) she then volunteers to be Dr Murphy's sacrifice. She knows the story.
The Murphys' life is characterized by a kind of torpor. No-one has any zest for anything. The conversations are banal and wary. Dr Murphy and then Kim report her first period as if it were a head cold. All sense of the primeval has been lost. Anna feigns total anesthesia for her sex with her husband. His friend and anesthesiologist charges Anna a hand job for info.
Facing the curse Steven tries coaxing, coercion, threats, even physical violence and the threat of murder, to shake the seer off his vision. Steven turns to a school counsellor for advice on which child to pick. Anna twigs to their predicament: "Our children are dying, but yes. I can make you mashed potatoes." She marshals the will to free Martin from her husband's futile abuse.
Indeed both the doctor and the anesthesiologist each blame the other for failures in the operating room. This is the modern world with advanced science and culture but with stupefied emotions and a shallow sense of responsibility. Dr Murphy forbids smoking in the house, but his wife and daughter smoke outside. Martin accepts his recent addiction with the same resignation he seems to have accepted as his role of messenger from the gods, to bring Murphy to their harsh justice.
This elemental tragedy is the prophet director's harsh judgment on a world that evades its guilt and responsibility by suspending all conscience, all sense of a higher purpose than the mundane and worldly. The modern news cycle allows no time for the eternal. -
TxMike20 September 2020I went into watching this with no background and it is strange from the start, the stilted dialog and unusual responses characters often give. The title threw me until I read later that one version of the Greek myth requires the killing of a sacred deer to get the gods to help.
I watched this until the end and was NOT satisfied with its conclusion. A teenager whose dad died on the operating table seems required to take revenge on the doctor's family and that means killing one of them, as they first become paralyzed then their eyes bleed. The only way this could have any reality in today's world is if the teenager has some sort of supernatural powers. And in fact there is a scene where the doctor's wife (Kidman) kisses the bloody feet of the tied-up teenager in their basement, presumably to suggest the biblical story of Jesus' feet being washed by a prostitute.
So, while the movie is well-made in most respects, and the actors are good, I did NOT find this movie satisfying. Maybe if I were a fan of Greek mythology it would come across better. I found it very interesting, just not very good.
On BluRay from my public library, my wife skipped. -
Cineanalyst2 December 2018What a strange filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is. Had I not already seen "The Lobster" (2015) (and have since seen two of his earlier Greek productions), I probably would've been completely taken aback by this one, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer." Like its predecessor, its characters seem to occupy some alternate reality entirely dominated by egocentrism, deviant sex and magical retaliatory justice. Again, the acting is intentionally stilted, and there seem to be archaic literary references. I found the eye-for-an-eye pun of "The Lobster" amusing, but the source of Ancient-to-Classical Greek mythology here is quite a treat for me. At university, I took a class, not unlike the daughter in this movie, that included reading the play "Iphigenia in Aulis" by Euripides and, then, viewing the 1977 film adaptation "Iphigenia" directed by Mihalis Kakogiannis. Unfortunately, the result in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" is rather muddled.
In the Greek myth, King Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, at the behest of the goddess Artemis to allow him and his troops to proceed on the warpath to fight the Trojans. In some versions, Iphigenia is replaced by a deer, hence the title of this movie. The reason I don't think the effects work as well here as they did in "The Lobster" is because whereas that movie took human shortcomings to absurd extremes, this one takes what was already by modern standards an absurd myth and attempts to make it modern and more ordinary. Gods are dead and replaced by doctors, and if there is a god, apparently, he's a pockmarked teenager seeking revenge for his dead father. I suppose a surgeon's wife role playing during sex as a patient under general anesthesia and a father recalling to his son the time he masturbated his father is more in line with some of the sexual perversity one finds in some Classical Greek literature, though. Yet, overall, it comes across as disjointed. If this were supposed to be a psychological thriller, it seems difficult to lure the spectator in without being able to identify with the characters--whereas this was unnecessary in the black comedy of "The Lobster" (and contradictory to the intent of the Greek movies). But, the stilted acting and illogical premise of the narrative works against identification. I don't think any amount of tense scoring and camera movement from distant perspectives can alleviate that--in a world where nothing is sacred.
P.S. I still don't quite get the point of "Groundhog Day" (1993) as the film-within-the-film. Is it just because characters in both are prisoners of fate or something? I prefer the self-reflexivity of the director's prior "Dogtooth" (2009) and "Alps" (2011). -
The renowned heart surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is married with Dr. Anna Murphy (Nicole Kidman) with two children, the young teenager Kim (Raffey Cassidy) and the boy Bob (Sunny Suljic) that are their pride and joy. He works with the anesthetist Matthew (Bill Camp) and recently he is dedicating attention to the teenager Martin (Barry Keoghan), whose father died in a surgery. Steven brings Martin to meet his family and the teenager invites him to have dinner at his home with his mother (Alicia Silverstone), who harasses Steven. He rejects and on the next day, Bob gets sick without walking. Steven and Anna bring Bob to the hospital and after a complete checkup, the doctors do not find any problem with the boy. Soon Martin meets Steven and tells that he killed his father; now he has to kill Anna or Kim or Bob; otherwise they will all get sick and die. Who is Martin?
"The Killing of a Sacred Deer" is a weird, intriguing but absolutely disappointing and overrated film. The plot and the performances are cold, without heart, and has scenes absolutely unnecessary, like Anna masturbating Matthew in the car or the cameo of Alicia Silverstone. However, the screenplay holds the attention of the viewer that expects the clarification of the mystery. Unfortunatelly the conclusion is awful without any explanation for what is happening or who Martin is or has done. My vote is three.
Title (Brazil): Not Available -
SnoopyStyle3 March 2018Surgeon Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) and wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) have teen daughter Kim and young son Bob. He is befriended by Martin (Barry Keoghan) who is the son of his dead patient. Martin insinuates himself into Steven's family and Kim falls for him. Martin reveals his threatening predictions with a devastating solution.
After his interesting weird The Lobster, Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos creates another oddity. His insistence on the mannered monotone dialogue delivery has a hypnotic effect that puts me to sleep. I had to rewind to get back into the flow. Keoghan's dead-eye serial killer performance is too obvious. I can't believe that Steven would bring him into his home. While I appreciate a lot of the outsider oddity flavor, I cannot take any reality from any of the characters or situation. The first thought I have as Steven is that the boy poisoned my family. At a certain point, these are no longer realistic people but rather artistic installations. There is some value in the artwork and I can imagine this story as a shocking psychological thriller in another person's hands. -
Her-Excellency11 December 2021This is definitely not one for everyone and that's okay, sure, but to assign it a 1-star or 2-star rating as some have done, is just ridiculous, especially when the disconnect certainly is on the side of the viewer. In fact, those who deemed the acting 'bad' (one reviewer notes: "I thought the characters were robots") missed the entire point of the film.
While, admittedly, the acting from the girl who plays the daughter is flawed, both the acting from the rest of the cast and the way in which the story unfolds is purposefully meant to make you feel highly uncomfortable - and it succeeds.
From the very first scene, to where your mind goes in regard to the sexual nature of the relationships, to the inappropriate or generally eyebrow-raising topics of discussion between some of the characters, this film is MEANT to BE "creepy" and to make the viewer FEEL odd, off - and even dirty.
Much of the creepy-factor, if you will, comes PRECISELY FROM the amazing way in which most of these talented actors made these characters come across as disturbing, unappealing, ALMOST like most of us, ALMOST worth sympathizing with, but not quite. It would have lost much as a film of this nature had the acting been that of a normal or run-of-the-mill family). Again, EVERYTHING, from the topics of conversations, to their postures, to their almost detached delivery, was purposeful and meant to lend to the eeriness of the film and the discomfort of the viewer. THINK about it for a moment: have you ever watched Colin Farrell NOT deliver an enthusiastic, almost convivial performance? The departure from his easy affability in other roles, and almost apathetic delivery in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, was purposeful, and necessary to drive the uncomfortable narrative deep into the viewers minds. This is the very same reason (among many others) one particular character sings - eerily. The viewing experience had to be uncomfortable.
While The Killing of a Sacred Deer may not go down as a family favorite or as one we watch over and over, it is definitely engrossing for its running time and more importantly, it isn't the thousands of other films on hundreds of streaming sites with nothing to say for itself. In short, for those who specifically look for and enjoy films which are not the standard fare, this one is a should-watch.
7.6/8. -
methodman-702524 November 2017Saying that the "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" is just a great psychological thriller is at least undermining...
This film is full of brilliant metaphors, but you have to know Greek mythology and history to understand some of them. When Agamemnonas wanted to go to Troy to fight with his ships, there was no wind and he could't get there. So he asked the Gods to throw some strong winds, but the Gods replied that he had to sacrifice something in order to get the winds he desired, so they told him he had to kill his daughter. Agamemnonas thought about it and he decided to kill his daughter, but when he was just about to kill her, the gods transformed her into a deer, so he killed a sacred deer.
That's where the title of the movie comes from and you can easily guess the reason..
So this film is about choices, sacrifices and revenge.But revenge from the Gods. When Martin can bring sickness and death to Steven's whole family, in fact martin is in the place of a God from Greek mythology. And his duty is to bring the justice and punish those who overestimated their powers and tried to play gods( Steven went to do a surgery drunk)
In addition to that, this great film of lanthimos, gives a harsh critic to the modern way of living in the western societies. Alienation, fake goals, fake relations and money that that bring comfort but not happiness.
In conclusion it's a great film that gives you much homework to think about when you get home after you watched it and surely much more than just a great psychological thriller that many people believe it to be.. -
Prismark1013 October 2019Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos makes a film based on a Greek tragedy, Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides.
Heart surgeon Steven Murphy's (Colin Farrell) life is in turmoil after he befriends a troubled teenager Martin (Barry Keoghan) who is the son of a patient who died while Steven was treating him.
Martin blames Steven for his father's death. His wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) finds out that Steven had been drinking when he treated Martin's dad. Now Martin is threatening harm to both of their children and he wants Steven to make a deadly choice.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a weird arthouse film and not a very good one. It starts out with the Murphy's comfortable lifestyle and everyone delivering lines in a monotonous cold way. It is too self consciously trying to be offbeat, dark and pretentious.
It then becomes unpleasant, surreal and violent as Martin can somehow make the Murphy's children fall ill by some form of magic. This compels Steven to act in a way to somehow rescue his family. It is essentially a demented version of Sophie's Choice. -
PaxtonMalloy25 January 2018Here is simple truth. A film isn't good just because it breaks certain rules of storytelling or is just done different than "mainstream movies". I see critics falling for that again and again. This film is the perfect example.
Take the dialog for example. The dialog in this film is absurd. All characters explain everything they say or mean in every moment. That maybe unusual but that doesn't make it good.
The music is another example. At a certain point in the movie you get just plain annoying music in every scene. It plays just one or two notes. It is supposed to make you uncomfortable. It works but not as it should be. The idea is to play the uncomfortable music in moments of great discomfort not as a constant background music. Because that makes you just uncomfortable in the sense of being annoying.
This film succeeds in being unconventional but fails to be good film making. -
Deathstryke3 December 2017I went into "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" knowing that it was based on an ancient Greek tragedy which I had not read and that the trailer was ...pretty weird. So I was braced for something more auteur and symbolic that I would have to retrospectively interpret and extract meaning from, not something immediately tangible or obvious.
However, try as I might, there was not one meaningful thing I could extract from this ponderous, drawn out mess of a film. I am not familiar with Yorgos Lanthimos's previous work -I have not seen the Lobster- but I'm told TKOASD is very much in keeping with his stylistic quirks; Emotionally vacant, surrealist art installations masquerading as film.
A brief, spoiler-free summary of the plot: A heart surgeon, his wife and two children are befriended/stalked by a mysterious teenager who's strange mannerisms belie a dark, twisted plan and a destructive supernatural power. The plot and its fantastical leanings didn't bother me. What did bother me was the awkward execution.
The cast of one dimensional archetypes all ramble their lines in a robotic manner, their eyes fixed in a detached, glacial stare. It is impossible to connect with any of them on an emotional level, even when the stakes rise and certain characters are met with horrific choices, the focus seems to be less about conveying the emotional depth that a real person might plunge to in those circumstances, and more about favoring the artifice of the shot. Barry Keoghan's Martin -the malevolent teenager stalking the family- is perhaps the only character served well by this robotic approach. His monotone aloofness, combined with his shifty vacant eyes make him feel all the more disturbing and unpredictable.
Colin Farrell on the other hand, gives one of the most stultifying performances of his career. His character, Stephen, a heart surgeon and father of two, is so utterly devoid of pathos, employing his frowny face and flat middle-class Dublin cadence to every line, he fails to make Stephen believable or likable, even when he's blubbering snot all over himself in one incongruously candid scene, it feels artificial and contrived, as in the next scene he goes right back to being a cold, miserable android again.
Nicole Kidman does a better job with her material as Stephen's wife, at least her delivery is the least morose of the lot, but her performance is still frustratingly restricted in places where it should be amplified, making her mostly unsympathetic.
Stephen's children, the innocent victims of Martin's vengeful plot, should surely have some element of likability if we are to feel any fear for their predicament, but alas they too are passive, unfeeling robots who fail to engage.
The film instead relies on gimmicky mechanics to convey tension and dread where the stolid acting falls short. There are dozens of shots where the camera slowly zooms down long corridors or empty rooms, accompanied by screechy, dissonant sound effects as if trying to convince you that the dreary banality of what's unfolding on screen is actually threatening and you should be very afraid.
The film is also full of pointlessly weird scenarios and obtuse dialogue that seem to be there solely for the purpose of making the viewer squirm uncomfortably. There are many bizarre references to menstruation and armpit hair, a pointless sex scene involving a nude Nicole Kidman pretending to be anesthetized so her pervert husband can get it up, and one particularly risible scene where Colin Farrell confesses to his young son that when he was a small boy, he happened upon his sleeping father and masturbated him until "The bed sheets were covered in sperm".
The nonsense continues at a creeping pace until the under-whelming, implausible climax, which feels a poor reward for enduring what was essentially a 30 minute short film stretched into two hours. I don't think any amount of retrospective research on "Iphigenia in Aulis" will change my rating. One of the worst films of 2017. -
lor_11 February 2019This poorly written and badly directed movie from Oscar nominee (for "The Favourite") Yorgos Lanthimos is yet another Emperor's New Clothes example of bad contemporary cinema. You can fool some of the people some of the time...
As often is the case during a bad movie, my mind started to wander and I thought about Ed Norton's breakthrough film "Primal Fear", a suspense thriller featuring a memorable war of wills with Richard Gere. In "Deer" we have Barry Keoghan reminding me of Norton, but giving a rote, clumsy performance. For director Yorgos, niceties like believable acting, believable characters and attempts to help the viewer suspend disbelief are way too cornball for him to attempt, instead substituting his tiresome Theater of the Absurd antics.
In contemporary porn, wedded to internet streaming as the mode of delivery, a set-up for a scene/video lasts a minute or two to establish some dumb stag movie type premise, and then it's on to the races for a half hour or so of nonstop explict sex action. In "Deer" Yorgos takes an hour, fully half of the movie to shaggy-dog build up his absurd supernatural premise, during which the cast walks through their roles like zombies.
Nonsensical second half, with its absurd violence and ridiculous sexual innuendo (Nicole Kidman's off-screen hand-job for example) traps the characters with zero degrees of freedom, making their actions subject to "fate" or some pretentious appeal to Euripedes and Greek myth. It's not interesting watching them go through the motions and none of the scenes are credible. Under the guise of avant-garde filmmaking, we get hackwork. Oh, for a great filmmaker like a Sidney Lumet (with scores of great movies about conflict and war of wills, my favorite perhaps not the Pacino classics but Sean Connery in "The Offence"), not the trendy hacks of today's cinema. -
My Rating : 1/10
'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' has all the trademarks of writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos. The robotic acting, monotonous delivery of dialogues, weird character perversions, the eerie background score and the strange attempt at humour are all here.
If you want to see a drama about a family of robotic androids this is it! Accompanied by screechy, dissonant sound effects you will surely find yourself questioning at some point what is the purpose of this movie?!
If you are looking for a similar type of content, I highly suggest to check out Miss Violence (2013) - it's much better than this.
I found 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' rather pointless and the worst part for me was the annoying background music juxtaposed with mundane scenes as if trying to convince the viewer that the dreary banality of what's unfolding on screen is actually threatening and one should be afraid. Pointless, dumb and absolutely irritating filmmaking.
NOT RECOMMENDED. -
zinitime18 August 2022A waste of time, talent, film and money! Artistic, perhaps. Boring, definitely. The actors walked, while they could, though their parts with no expression in voice nor actions, but, that is what they were directed to do. Why someone would waste their time, talent, or money on this film is beyond me. Even the music was dull and boring. At one point, there was no sound at all! Bleak, depressing atmosphere was maintained throughout. If you expect an explanation as to how this family is afflicted with their inability to move, or eat, you won't get one. That wasn't the point of this film. The point was to make a bleak, depressing film, which it is.
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This is one of those movies I have nothing nice to say about. The only thing I'll hand this movie is that I don't want to blame the actors/actresses. They've all shown that they have talent and I believe they were all instructed to act in such a robotic and monotone style. This obviously backfired as I couldn't attach myself to their characters because of it but I get the intention. My hope is that they all bounce back soon with other more worthwhile projects.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer is filmed in a deliberately cold and sterile way. There are plenty of distant shots when characters are walking down hallways, all the dialogue is delivered without any kind of inflection and the final moments lack any kind of feeling. Again, this wasn't done by accident and I understand that it might just being going over my head. But the trade-off with this style is that it sucks any kind of emotional investment out of the movie. This bleeds over into the characters who are all jerks and terrible people. I wasn't rooting for anyone by the end of the movie. Steven is too arrogant to like; his children and his wife are content to stab each other in the back as long as it suits their best interest. Martin's plan is so ruthless that you can't root for him as the villain (this is also compounded by his complete lack of personality). This is an ugly movie about ugly people in an ugly situation. I get that's the point but if that's the case, why should I enjoy this movie?
The next thing is that this movie has very little plot to speak of. There is the mystery of how Martin is doing this (there is no resolution about that) but otherwise, the only other question posed is answered at the halfway point. There isn't anything else! If you're going to strip any emotional resonance from the movie or refuse to give me anyone to root for, I need an intriguing plot to hold my interest. Sadly, this was just one more thing the movie lacks.
What this movie relies on is the dialogue and that aspect doesn't pick up the slack. Sure, there are some minor exchanges that are interesting but there isn't any deeper meaning revealed through these characters interacting with one another. It often gets repetitive (there are at least a couple of scenes where Steven and Anna lecture the kids about not doing their chores) or downright bizarre (Steven's story of childhood masturbation was icky). It just failed to hold my attention (again the fact its delivered so coldly didn't' help) and it was just something else that was disappointing.
This movie joins A Ghost Story and Mother! In a category of 2017 films that critics adored and I ended up hating. I will say that like those movies, there was a clear vision of what they wanted, and they achieved it. Yorgos Lanthimos had something specific in mind and was more concerned about bringing his vision to life than whether the audience would get it. As much as defenders of this movie would say "well you're not the target audience", I'm open to trying new and different types of movies and I don't need to make concessions to an awful movie because they didn't make it with me in mind. I was repulsed by this movie for much of the running time. My hopes that it would get better when we got further into the plot were deflated like a balloon running out of air. Unless you're a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos' previous work (I haven't seen The Lobster, maybe its good?) or you're dying to see something off-kilter and deliberately hard to understand, do not see this movie. -
Leofwine_draca26 April 2018One of the most pretentious films I can remember seeing in a long while, THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER tries to be a family-centred psycho thriller but instead turns out to be a long-winded and interminable bore. The film stars Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman as a married couple whose lives are ruined when a strange and obnoxious boy comes into their lives and makes them a deathly ultimatum. The plot's okay in itself, but not when things are dragged out to this interminably slow length. The worst thing about the movie by far is the direction, from a Greek chap who couldn't direct traffic, let alone a proper movie. Every single scene is distracted by his stupid camera tricks, with slow zooms in and out being particular favourites. The film is icy, cold, and has no heart at all, and at times there's blaring noise on the soundtrack that just annoys you. Farrell and Kidman do nothing with their underwritten parts while Barry Keoghan is no more than one-dimensional as the supposed antagonist. It's the kind of awful viewing experience that never seems to end.
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mr_iceman21 January 2018It's been a while since I've written a review for a movie, however I felt compelled to do so with this trash-fest given it consumed 2 hours of my night. The first 15 minutes of the movie starts off well, you're introduced to a high profile surgeon, a great family and an unexplained relationship with an annoying boy with various forms of autism and long list of deficiencies. From that point on-wards, the movie dips like a car without brakes. The director proceeds to introduce us to awkward and unnecessary sexual encounters from 'laying-dead' fetishes to rapid hand-jobs,
The entire movie revolves around this irritating kid bent on revenge to wipe out an entire family through magic curses due to the accidental manslaughter of his father at the hands of the surgeon. I wonder what sort of revenge he would have exacted had his dad been killed intentionally, he may have wiped out humanity. Nonetheless, you continue watching this slug-fest hoping for a dramatic change, hoping for the surgeon to kill this boy and remove this curse, or perhaps seeing a flashback of the surgeon accidentally cut the father's heart in a fit of alcoholic rage. But nope, we are further subjected to low-tone deep bass sound effects, the type you would hear in the museum exhibiting whale sex. A total waste of time, avoid this turkey at all costs. -
bottomsgaming29 November 2017Yorgos Lanthimos's latest film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is well-shot, adeptly acted, intensely written, and beautifully unsettling. An outstanding achievement by any metric. And I never want to see it again.
From the opening shot, the film wears its tone not only on its sleeve, but also on its chest, face, and everywhere else: Its gonna make you uncomfortable. From the haunting score that seems to creep its way into every scene, to the awkward and robotic characters, to the downright scary Martin (played excellently by Barry Keoghan), the movie feels 'off.' We've seen this "seemingly perfect upper- class family has a darkness that tears them apart" type story before, but never so viscerally displayed as it is here.
If the characters' inhuman mannerisms, conversations, and actions aren't unsettling enough, the film also delivers enough on-screen gross outs to hammer home a truly affecting experience. The film is objectively well-shot, and delivers a capable, if slightly subdued plot, while building to a frightening conclusion. It's not a horror movie sort of frightening either, but more of a, "I can't believe I'm about to watch this" feeling.
I know that's a tough sell. The Killing of a sacred Deer is not going to make you feel good. The film is filled with an overarching, all-consuming darkness that lingers even after it's over. Still, it's a truly unique and deeply affecting film that's worth watching, even if only once. -
How can Hollywood spend money at this sort of drivel?? If you accuse me of 'not getting' the movie, I'll own it. The acting was intentionally stiff and unpleasant and very unrealistic. The soundtrack devolved into startling and ugly noises, bangs, blips, sour notes, etc.
And the ending, after sitting through this train wreck for 2 hours? The most mind numbingly stupid and disgusting and depressing thing possible, for absolutely no good reason.
I thought this was going to be a serious movie, but it's not long before you realize that this is a silly 'that boy has magic' story that totally ruins it. If you still feel like watching this movie, go out and watch a cat getting run over by a car instead, it'll be a lot more uplifting. -
chaplinjh12 June 2022This movie is quite juvenile in it's conception and writing. It is also utterly predictable from start to finish. The pacing isn't just slow it's brain sucking as there is nothing interesting in the silence but movie makers who think they are more clever than they are. There is nothing clever here, it's completely self indulgent and nonsensical. All of the characters are bereft of intelligence and common sense, there isn't a single redeeming fact or character, had they all disappeared halfway through the first scene they wouldn't have been missed.
Big waste of some decent talent. All the actors seem lost and standing around waiting to be handing rewrites for the day. As someone once described an actor's performance having run the emotional gambit from A to B...well here you can see that it's run from A to A-. -
davidmvining21 November 2019Yes, this movie is weird, and it's entirely intentional.
Yorgos Lanthimos is an interesting Greek director who's been making English language films for a few years. The Lobster is so dry and oddball that I ended up kind of loving it. The Favourite I ended up loving because it was able to most effectively balance its weirdness with its characters (perhaps because he didn't actually write this script as opposed to everything else he's directed).
The Killing of A Sacred Deer is the movie he made in between the two listed above, and I think it might be the weakest of the three. Good instead of very good, that is.
So, let me talk about the weirdness. Everything about this movie feels stilted and mannered. It's off putting, especially at the beginning when you're trying to figure out what on earth the movie actually is. As the story progresses, though, it's easy to see the nefarious undercurrents running through every scene. We spend the first half of the movie trying to figure out where this unease originates from, and the fact that everyone is delivering unnatural dialogue unnaturally heightens the feeling.
I've seen so many complaints of unnatural dialogue over the years. The one example strongest in my mind is around the movie Juno. The complaints of the mannered way in which characters spoke seemed to be a mask for complaints about the rest of the movie that people couldn't figure out how to express, so they picked on the dialogue. I'm not saying that criticism of such writing is invalid or always misdirected, but that did seem to be the trend I noticed and continue to notice in such criticisms. Just because dialogue isn't reflective of how people actually speak (I like to think of Mamet), that doesn't mean that the dialogue is a failure. Oftentimes, it's that way for a reason.
Anyway, back to the movie. The sense of unease that permeates the film is great, and I kind of loved the film for about the first three-quarters. However, once the plot began to unravel and resolve, I felt like the movie lost some of its edge. When the main character is presented with his great moral choice (and his blackly comedic method for resolving it), I felt more removed from the choice than I should have. The build up is what works best in this movie, while the resolution just simply doesn't gel as well.
Still, the movie's an odd but entertaining little thriller. -
Don't waste your time. This is a terrible movie. Greek tragedies don't update well to modern day. Most of them have illogical and stupid and irritating stories that only fit into the context of mythology and ancient times.
Colin Farrell plays a doctor who negligently killed a man. Later the son of the dead man puts a curse on the family of the doctor. The kids get paralyzed and stop eating. The only way to stop it for the doctor to sacrifice one of his family members. Nicole Kidman plays the wife.
The monotone in which the cast speaks in is silly. The sexual scenes are out of place.
The tragedy about this movie is the fact they made it. -
fewsternoble29 December 2017I really don't know where to begin with this, it's such a BAD movie. The acting is, well, wierd from the off, like they are reading from a book, literally. I thought that with the stars in this movie and the ratings it received it would be a sure fire hit in our household. How wrong i was, i really don't know what the other reviewers of this were thinking, to give this a 7 or 8 you must of seen another movie by mistake. After and hour i thought we should be watching something else but, the wife said "no" lets stick with it, it may be good. At the end i asked her what she thought, "absolute rubbish". This isnt a classic in any way, shape, or form, please please please stay away, it is definately 2 hours you won't get back.
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rbrb8 July 2022This movie is so bad I put it on my worst ever list.
It is complete garbage.
From beginning to end I had no idea what it is about. But when I later learnt its from the same loonies who made that other awful crap called the lobster then I have some idea what mental illness is existing here.
The movie is a disgusting example of why warped minds get firearms and do terrible carnage:
1/10. -
kosmasp26 March 2018Dialog is going to be weird. Suffice to say that you won't feel anything close to something familiar. The movie is way off and if you are familiar with the work of the director this will not come as a surprise. Obviously for some this was the first experience with him. And it can be intimidating and rather confusing. There are certain rules that are there and even the structure is quite "normal", but other than that ... all bets are off.
The acting may seem wooden, but it's intentional. As are the pauses and the "humor"/comedy. Not for the masses and definitely more confusing than trying to explain anything. But therein lies the charm of the movie - if you can see it and have an open mind about it.