The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is a 2017 absurdist psychological horror thriller film directed and co-produced by Yorgos Lanthimos, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Efthimis Filippou. It stars Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, and Bill Camp. It follows a cardiac surgeon who introduces his family to a teenage boy with a connection to his past, after which they mysteriously begin to fall ill.

The film had its world premiere at the 70th Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2017, where it was awarded Best Screenplay. It was theatrically released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 3 November 2017, by Curzon Artificial Eye. It grossed $10.7 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, who praised Lanthimos' direction, the screenplay, cinematography, and performances of the cast (particularly those of Keoghan, Farrell, and Kidman). At the 15th Irish Film & Television Awards, the film earned four nominations, with Keoghan winning Best Supporting Actor. It was nominated for Best Director, Best Screenwriter, and Best Actor (Farrell) at the 30th European Film Awards, and for Best Supporting Male (Keoghan) and Best Cinematography at the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards.

Plot
After performing an open heart surgery, Steven Murphy, a cardiothoracic surgeon in Cincinnati, meets 16-year-old Martin Lang, whose father died a few years earlier, in a diner. Steven goes home to his wife Anna and their children Kim and Bob. Steven invites Martin to meet his family, and Martin gets along with everyone, especially Kim. That night, Martin invites Steven to his house for dinner the next day.

At Martin's house, after dinner, Martin goes to bed, leaving Steven alone with his mother. Martin's mother begins flirting with Steven, and he leaves.

Martin visits Steven's office, complaining of chest pain, but tests show nothing wrong. Martin invites Steven over again, saying his mother finds Steven attractive, but Steven refuses. Afterward, Martin's demands for Steven's attention grow increasingly frequent and desperate. Steven is troubled to learn that Martin gave Kim a ride home on his motorcycle.

One morning, Steven's son Bob is unable to move his legs, so Steven and Anna rush him to the hospital, where numerous tests are performed. Martin tells Steven that, to "balance things" for his father, who died while Steven was operating on him, Steven must kill a member of his own family. Otherwise, within a few days, Steven's family will all die after paralysis, an inability to eat, and bleeding from the eyes. Steven has Martin escorted from the hospital. Later, Bob begins refusing to eat, but no cause can be found.

Kim, who has fallen in love with Martin, collapses while singing in the choir and is also hospitalized. She chokes on a piece of apple and is unable to eat too. Kim and Bob are given feeding tubes. Steven tells Anna of his history with Martin. He also admits to drinking before operating on Martin's father. Martin calls Anna and over the phone tells Kim to stand up and walk, which she does. When he hangs up, she collapses again. Anna confronts Martin about forcing her children to suffer. Martin replies it is justice to him since he believes Steven killed his father.

Kim and Bob are sent home. After Anna chastises Steven for his passive way of dealing with the situation, Steven ties Martin up in his basement. He beats Martin and shoots him in the leg, but Martin is not intimidated. Martin bites Steven's arm as well as his own arm. The children argue over whom their father will kill and try to curry his favor. Steven asks the school principal which of his children is "best". (The principal tells Steven that Bob excels in mathematics and sciences and that Kim excels in literature and history, citing her excellent essay on Iphigenia.) But he says it is impossible to point out the best.

Back home, Anna brings the children to see Martin, tends to his wounds, and kisses his feet, but she fails to elicit any sympathy. She then tells Steven that he should kill one of the children, not her, because she can have another child. Kim fails to persuade Martin to heal her so they can run away together and then tells Steven how much she loves her family and offers her life to save theirs. Finally, hopeless, Anna releases Martin.

When Bob begins bleeding from his eyes, which Martin said would happen a few hours before death, Steven places him, Kim, and Anna in a circle, bound with duct tape, and covers their heads. Steven pulls a woolen hat over his face, spins around, and repeatedly fires a rifle. He narrowly misses Kim and Anna, but the third shot kills Bob.

Some time later, Martin, his face still somewhat bruised, enters the diner where he and Steven used to meet. The remaining Murphys are inside and promptly leave. Martin watches as they go. Steven avoids his gaze, Anna shoots him an icy glare, and Kim, who is healed, glances back before walking out of the door.

Cast

 * Colin Farrell as Steven Murphy
 * Nicole Kidman as Anna Murphy
 * Barry Keoghan as Martin Lang
 * Raffey Cassidy as Kimberly "Kim" Murphy
 * Sunny Suljic as Robert "Bob" Murphy
 * Alicia Silverstone as Martin's Mother
 * Bill Camp as Matthew Williams
 * Barry Bernson as Dr. Larry Banks
 * Herb Caillouet as Ed Thompson (Hospital Director)
 * Denise Dal Vera as Mary Williams
 * Drew Logan as Principal
 * Michael Trester as Elderly Man
 * Ming Wang as Doctor (Abdominal)

Production
The Killing of a Sacred Deer takes its title from part of the story of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides. On 11 May 2016, it was announced that Farrell was set to star in the film, with Lanthimos directing from a screenplay he wrote alongside Filippou. This was the second collaboration between Lanthimos and Farrell, after 2015's The Lobster. Kidman was cast that June, and Silverstone, Cassidy, Camp, Keoghan, and Suljic joined the project in August. The film was financed by Film4 Productions and New Sparta Films along with the Irish Film Board, and was developed by Element Pictures with support from Film4, while HanWay Films served as worldwide sales agent.

By 23 August 2016, the film had begun principal photography at The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. Shooting also took place in the Hyde Park and Northside neighborhoods of the city.

Release
The Killing of a Sacred Deer premiered at the 70th Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2017, where it competed for the Palme d'Or and won Best Screenplay. In May 2016, A24 acquired North American distribution rights and Haut et Court acquired French distribution rights to the film. It was theatrically released in the United States on 20 October 2017, and in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 3 November 2017.

Box office
In North America, The Killing of a Sacred Deer made $114,585 from four theaters in its opening weekend, an average of $28,646 per venue. It opened to £288,105 and finished on £857,615 in the United Kingdom. The film ultimately grossed $2.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $8.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $10.7 million.

Critical response
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing that "The Killing of a Sacred Deer moves with a somnambulist's certainty along its own distinctive spectrum of weird. It's an intriguing, disturbing, amusing twist on something which in many ways could be a conventional horror-thriller from the 1970s or 1980s, or even a bunny-boiler nightmare from the 90s." Mark Kermode of The Observer also gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a typically arch dramatic conundrum, laced with Lanthimos's trademark off-kilter artifice and deadpan humour" and "a Saw movie for the arthouse crowd, an increasingly sickening hunger game driven by an inflexible moral imperative, with a whiff of medical misadventure."

A. O. Scott of The New York Times opined that "Lanthimos is less interested in moral shock therapy or social criticism than in aesthetic estrangement. Sacred Deer feels like a dark, opaque bit of folklore transplanted into an off-kilter modern setting." Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a lightly blood-spattered but technically immaculate nightmare of a movie that invites us to cackle alongside its director into the void" and commented, "With a nastiness that seeps into the movie like a slow-acting poison, [Lanthimos] turns a domestic-medical nightmare into a feverish exercise in style."

The Killing of a Sacred Deer was named "one of the best horror movies of the year" by Joey Keogh of Wicked Horror, who called it "horror in its purest, most distilled form, freed from the shackles of jump scares or exposition." Keogh wrote that Keoghan is the film's "ace card", giving "his best, most self-assured performance to date" as Martin, the "supremely frightening yet weirdly charismatic creation who makes even the act of eating spaghetti seem terrifying." Zhuo-Ning Su of Awards Daily wrote that the film is "less complex than [Lanthimos's] previous work but engrosses and unsettles all the same", adding that it "palpably improves" in its second hour. While praising the cast, particularly Kidman, Su added that Keoghan "shines brightest as the plain but charismatic boy who's somehow not quite right", calling his performance "vivid" and "fully realised".

In a mixed review, Nicholas Bell of ION Cinema wrote that the "mysterious, highly metaphorical" film, which he compared to "something from the Old Testament", "finds the director getting a bit too hung up on his own idiosyncrasies." He also criticized Lanthimos's and Filippou's "overtly precise dialogue", which he felt "straitjacketed" the actors, but he praised director of photography Thimios Bakatakis and the "eerie" score. Bell summarized the film as "interesting, but a bit too ambiguous to remain as uncomfortably off-putting as it hopes".

Trace Thurman gave the film a five-star review in Bloody Disgusting, saying it would be "the most unsettling film you see this year" and giving particular credit to Lanthimos's direction and Bakatakis's cinematography, which he said give the film a "surreal, otherworldly quality". Thurman also praised the cast, writing that Farrell and Kidman "deliver their lines with a stilted coldness that sends chills up the spine", and calling the younger actors "equally impressive, with Keoghan being the standout. He gives an eerie performance that you believe to be that of a psychopath". Also writing for Bloody Disgusting, Benedict Seal gave the film a one-star review, stating that it had "none of the escalating intrigue and tension" of The Gift and The Witch, both released in 2015. Seal added that the film plays out "mechanically" after the reveal in the middle and said the visuals were "striking at times" but became "monotonous and garish", before summing up the film as "the biggest bum note yet from one of the most overrated directors in the art-house world" and "an epic embarrassment".