Revenge is best served slow in The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman dominate in the weirdly mind-bending and utterly twisted drama The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Every time around award season there’s a film you know you should enjoy, but you just can’t fathom the critical appreciation for it. Director Yorgos Lanthimos is probably best known to cinephiles for his dark romantic drama The Lobster. His reunion with that film’s lead, actor Colin Farrell, has produced another dark and narratively complex feature, The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Steeped in Greek mythology with extremely impassive humor, Sacred Deer is definitely unique but its substance is often too insurmountable to be accessible.
Lanthimos knows how to make an impression, and that comes through clear as day when your opening scene is a literal beating heart in an exposed chest cavity. This stark image sets up a movie where nothing is as it seems, and there are no methods to guide you through the metaphorical story.
On its surface the film follows the Murphys, anchored by patriarch and cardiologist Steven (Farrell). Steven spends his days acting as a surrogate father to a young man named Martin (Barry Keoghan) whose father died on Steven’s operating table. The two’s relationship plays out as a subversion of the typical “cheating thrillers” — think Fatal Attraction. Martin calls Steven daily, meets with him clandestinely, exchanges secret presents and has a fake backstory to explain their meetings.
It seems fairly innocent, if not a tad creepy, for the most part. That is until Martin demands that Steven sacrifice one of his family members as justice for his father. Steven, no surprise, refuses, but once his children come down with a mysterious paralysis the fear is that every member of the Murphys will die unless a choice is made.
Steven’s ticking clock is what anchors The Killing of a Sacred Deer. He and his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) assume the children’s illness is psychosomatic, or at least controlled by Martin in some way. Why can their daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) stand when Martin calls her? Whether Martin is a supernatural entity or a living manifestation of Steven’s own guilty conscience is never explained, because that’s not the script’s intention. The audience is left to starkly watch Steven grapple with the stages of his decision: denial at his children’s plight, the belief he can save him, and the eventual deterioration of the family unit because of his indecision.
Relegated to a few key locations, Killing of a Sacred Deer plays like an operatic tragedy, which isn’t surprising considering the origins of the film are based on a Greek myth involving a king who offends a god and must sacrifice his daughter as recompense. The script lobs out brief connections to this story, but you’re really adrift you aren’t interested in digging into references. The film’s closest comparison is Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, a similar tale of gods and sacrifice, albeit Lanthimos’ film is far more intriguing than Arnoofsky’s surface retelling of Genesis.
Farrell continues to showcase new facets of his craft and as the deadpan, blunt Steven, his brilliance and cruelty comes through. As a character Steven loves his family, but only so much as they stroke his ego. Farrell continues to understand Lanthimos’ humor, able to deliver extremely uncomfortable statements — everything from passive aggressively complaining about his watchband to the reveal of his daughter’s period — with just enough lightness to get an awkward chuckle from the audience. His work opposite Keoghan is where he shines, as the two men believe they have the other outwitted, only to be undermined at every turn. To his merit, Keoghan is nothing short of unnerving. His overly formalist way of speaking and his attempts to connect Steven with his widowed mother (played creepily by Alicia Silverstone) all create a character who is utterly unpredictable.
The highlight though is Nicole Kidman, who continues to command power in every film this year. As the sole voice of reason, Kidman’s Anna makes all the tough choices her husband refuses to make. At one point she even demands that one of their children be killed, if only to spare them as a family unit. The script does have a tendency to treat her with some level of inconsistency though. In one scene she demands Farrell calm down on tests early in the children’s sickness. Once they become very sick, Farrell acts as if her need to learn more about their illness is hysterical. As with most Lanthimos works, it’s unclear whether this is an intentional comment on hypocrisy or something.
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer isn’t necessarily something to be enjoyed. The acting is superlative, but the story just seems so cold and standoffish which, I know, is Lanthimos’ specialty. Suffice it to say if you’ve enjoyed previous works by the director, this is right up your alley.