The Killing of a Sacred Deer

What 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).

I'm usually a fan of independent or concept films much like this one. I love Greek mythology and what could be considered as surrealist films, they are some of my favourite in fact but whilst this film is shot beautifully and has some great music, by the end of the film, I just couldn't see more in it than as a pretentious mess which has an interesting concept but entirely wastes it in the effort to be considered as strange.

I won't go into the story because its simple and like Eraserhead, its the least interesting part of the movie. Unlike Eraserhead, however, it actually has no subtext to back up the reason for creating the movie rather than adapting Greek myths into the modern day. It's a simple revenge story with supernatural themes that is never explained but is only shown to the smallest of degrees. This tell don't show is also a big reason for why I couldn't get into the movie. It tells you about this briefly but it never goes into that story to any significant degree, not even in a way to keep it subtle.

The worst part really is that there's some very good scenes that get their very disturbing feeling but the pacing and how dramatized to the extreme some of the other scenes are, I just couldn't take the movie seriously for a big portion of the run time. It's even worse because I wanted to love this movie, maybe I should give it another try and think it over a bit more but I just keep questioning why it just didn't interest me in the characters or the story which just makes the surreal and disturbing elements feeling just feel like filler.

In short, I didn't hate it but couldn't like it or love it even as a huge lover of art-film and surrealist film in general. Maybe it just wasn't just right for me. There's scenes I like, the beginning is great but as it went along, I just got less interested with each passing minute of the film's progression. All this ending with a diner scene so pretentious that it nearly ruined the whole movie for me, it was just film-student like quality in a film that started off incredibly unique and interesting. But even though a film is unique and can be disturbing doesn't mean that its good and here it sadly wasn't the case, at least in my opinion.

This is probably going to be a controversial review but I expected so much more from this director from his other work but this just disappointed me more and more as it went along.

This 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.

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"

This 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.