The Killing of a Sacred deer.

This is a fundamentally creepy film. In the hands of a lesser director it would have been soon forgotten. But in Yorgos Lanthimos hands it is a haunting mystery. Everything about it contributes to the fact that it hard to shake long after you have seen it. The acting, the way it was shot, the stunted disjointed  interactions of the family, give the first indications of an impending catastrophe about to befall this seemingly perfectly placed successful family. All brought crashing down by an incident in the operating room of a major hospital. Steven Murphy, a prominent cardiologist played by Colin Farrell some years earlier lost a patient during a heart operation. His son appears at first benignly befriending him but with malevolent intentions towards him and his family. As time passes he makes his intentions of ‘justice’ in the form mysterious and physically undiagnosable maladies on his children, predicting their ultimate deaths. When the symptoms and prophesies begin to appear, The parents, the mother underplayed by Nicole Kidman are seemly  powerless to avert what increasingly seems inevitable. Even the capture, imprisonment and torture of Martin, played by Barry Keoghan. The instigator of the prophecies and threats have no effect on their childrens decline. The visuals, the stark, wide angle, alienated, interior shots racing down the hospital corridors, the eerie interior  panning shots of their house where the children are transferred after the hospitals doctors could not find anything physically wrong with them, add to in the increasing unspoken hysteria of events. I am not going to give away other than to say it enigmatic. This earlier film shows the promise of this gifted director which flowered magnificently in his subsequent ‘Poor Things’ feature.

430 stars